The Diamond Chariot

SHIMO-NO-KU





The first syllable, in which iron stars rain down from the sky


The putative Japanese had now been lost, and the Moscow Okhrana was tailing Thrush, so the efforts of the Petersburgians were concentrated entirely on the left luggage office. The items had been deposited there for twenty-four hours, which indicated that they would be called for no later than midday.

Fandorin and Mylnikov took up position in a secret observation post the evening before. As has already been mentioned, railway gendarmes were concealed in close proximity to the left luggage office, and Mylnikov’s agents were also taking turns to stroll around the square in front of the station, so the two bosses installed themselves comfortably in the premises of Lyapunov’s Funeral Services, which were located opposite the station, offering a superlative panoramic view. The American glass of the shop window was also very handy for their purpose, being funereal black and only allowing light through in one direction.

The two partners did not switch on the light – they had no real need for it anyway, since there was a street lamp burning nearby. The night hours dragged by slowly.

Every now and then the telephone rang – it was their subordinates reporting that the net had been cast, all the men were in position and vigilance was not slackening.

Fandorin and Mylnikov had already discussed everything to do with the job, but the conversation simply would not gel when it came to more abstract subjects – the ranges of the two partners’ interests were simply too different.

The engineer was not concerned, the silence did not bother him, but it drove the court counsellor wild.

‘Did you ever happen to meet Count Loris-Melikov?’ he asked.

‘Certainly,’ replied Fandorin, ‘but no more than that.’

‘They say the man had a great mind, even though he was Armenian.’

Silence.

‘Well, what I’m getting at is this. I’ve been told that before he retired His Excellency had a long tête-à-tête with Alexander III, and he made all sorts of predictions and gave him lots of advice: about a constitution, about concessions to foreigners, about foreign politics. Everyone knows the late tsar wasn’t exactly bright. Afterwards he used to laugh and say: “Loris tried to frighten me with Japan – just imagine it! He wanted me to be afraid of Japan”. That was in 1881, when no one even thought Japan was a proper country! Have you heard that story?’

‘I have had occasion to.’

‘See what kind of ministers Alexander II, the old Liberator, had. But Sandy number three had no time for them. And as for his son, our Nicky, well, what can you say … The old saying’s true: If He wants to punish someone, He’ll take away their reason. Will you at least say something! I’m talking sincerely here, straight from the heart. My soul’s aching for Russia.’

‘S-so I see,’ Fandorin remarked drily.

Not even taking a meal together brought them any closer, especially since each of them ate his own food. An agent delivered a little carafe of rowanberry vodka, fatty bacon and salted cucumbers for Mylnikov. The engineer’s Japanese servant treated him to pieces of raw herring and marinaded radish. Polite invitations from both parties to sample their fare were both declined with equal politeness. At the end of the meal, Fandorin lit up a Dutch cigar and Mylnikov sucked on a eucalyptus pastille for his nerves.

Eventually, at the time determined by nature, morning arrived.

The street lamps went out in the square, rays of sunlight slanted through the steam swirling above the damp surface of the road and sparrows started hopping about on the pavement under the window of the undertaker’s office.

‘There he is!’ Fandorin said in a low voice: for the last half-hour he had been glued to his binoculars.

‘Who?’

‘Our man. I’ll c-call the gendarmes.’

Mylnikov followed the direction of the engineer’s binoculars and put his own up to his eyes.

A man with a battered cap pulled right down to his ears was ambling across the broad, almost deserted square.

‘That’s him all right!’ the court counsellor said in a bloodthirsty whisper, and immediately pulled a stunt that was not envisaged in the plan: he stuck his head out through a small open windowpane and gave a deafening blast on his whistle.

Fandorin froze with the telephone receiver in his hand.

‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

Mylnikov grinned triumphantly and tossed his reply back over his shoulder:

‘Well, what did you expect? Didn’t think Mylnikov would let the railway gendarmes have all the glory, did you? You can sod that! The Jap’s mine, he’s mine!’

From different sides of the square, agents dashed towards the little man, four of them in all. They trilled on their whistles and yelled menacingly.

‘Stop!’

The spy listened and stopped. He turned his head in all directions. He saw there was nowhere to run, but he ran anyway – chasing after an empty early tram that was clattering towards Zatsepa Street.

The agent running to cut him off thought he had guessed his enemy’s intentions – he darted forward to meet the tramcar and leapt nimbly up on to the front platform.

Just at that moment the Japanese overtook the tram, but he didn’t jump inside; running at full speed, he leapt up and grabbed hold of a rung of the dangling ladder with both hands, and in the twinkling of an eye, he was up on the roof.

The agent who had ended up inside the tram started dashing about between the benches – he couldn’t work out where the fugitive had disappeared to. The other three shouted and waved their arms, but he didn’t understand their gesticulations, and the distance between them and the tram was gradually increasing.

Spectators at the station – departing passengers, people seeing them off, cab drivers – gaped at this outlandish performance.

Then Mylnikov clambered out of the open window almost as far as his waist and howled in a voice that could have brought down the walls of Jericho:

‘Put the brake on, you idiot!’

Either the agent heard his boss’s howling, or he twigged for himself, but he went dashing to the driver, and immediately the brakes squealed, the tram slowed down and the other agents started closing in on it rapidly.

‘No chance, he won’t get away!’ Mylnikov boasted confidently. ‘Not from my aces he won’t. Every one of them’s worth ten of your railway boneheads.’

The tram had not yet stopped, it was still screeching along the rails, but the little figure in the jacket ran along its roof, pushed off with one foot, performed an unbelievable somersault and landed neatly on a newspaper kiosk standing at the corner of the square.

‘An acrobat!’ Mylnikov gasped.

But Fandorin muttered some short word that obviously wasn’t Russian and raised his binoculars to his eyes.

Panting for breath, the agents surrounded the wooden kiosk. They raised their heads, waved their arms, shouted something – the only sounds that reached the undertaker’s premises were ‘f***! – f***! – f***!’

Mylnikov chortled feverishly.

‘Like a cat on a fence! Got him!’

Suddenly the engineer exclaimed:

‘Shuriken!’

He flung aside his binoculars, darted out into the street and shouted loudly:

‘Look out!’

But too late.

The circus performer on the roof of the kiosk spun round his own axis, waving his hand through the air rapidly – as if he were thanking the agents on all four sides. One by one, Mylnikov’s ‘aces’ tumbled on to the paved surface.

A second later the spy leapt down, as softly as a cat, and dashed along the street towards the gaping mouth of a nearby gateway.

The engineer ran after him. The court counsellor, shocked and stunned for a moment, darted after him.

‘What happened? What happened?’ he shouted.

‘He’ll get away!’ Fandorin groaned.

‘Not if I have anything to do with it!’

Mylnikov pulled a revolver out from under his armpit and opened fire on the fugitive like a real master, on the run. He had good reason to pride himself on his accuracy, he usually felled a moving figure at fifty paces with the first bullet, but this time he emptied the entire cylinder and failed to hit the target. The damned Japanese was running oddly, with sidelong jumps and zigzags – how can you pop a target like that?

‘The bastard!’ gasped Mylnikov, clicking the hammer of his revolver against an empty cartridge case. ‘Why aren’t you firing?’

‘There’s no p-point.’

The shooting brought the gendarmes tearing out of the station after breaking their cover for the ambush. The public started to panic, there was shouting and jostling, and waving of umbrellas. Local police constables’ whistles could be heard trilling from various directions. But meanwhile the fugitive had already disappeared into the gateway.

‘Along the side street, the side street!’ Fandorin told the gendarmes, pointing. ‘To the left!’

The light-blue uniforms rushed off round the building. Mylnikov swore furiously as he clambered up the fire escape ladder, but Erast Petrovich stopped and shook his head hopelessly.

He took no further part in the search after that. He looked at the gendarmes and police agents bustling about, listened to Mylnikov’s howls from up above his head and set off back towards the square.

A crowd of curious gawkers was jostling around the kiosk, and he caught glimpses of a policeman’s white peaked cap.

As he walked up, the engineer heard a trembling, senile voice declaiming:

‘So is it said in prophecy: and iron stars shall rain down from the heavens and strike down the sinners …’

Fandorin spoke sombrely to the policeman:

‘Clear the public away.’

Even though Fandorin was in civilian garb, the policeman realised from his tone of voice that this man had the right to command, and he immediately blew on his whistle.

To menacing shouts of ‘Move aside! Where do you think you’re shoving?’ Fandorin walked round the site of the slaughter.

All four agents were dead. They were lying in identical poses, on their backs. Each had an iron star with sharp, glittering points protruding from his forehead, where it had pierced deep into the bone.

‘Lord Almighty!’ exclaimed Mylnikov, crossing himself as he walked up.

Squatting down with a sob, he was about to pull a metal star out of a dead head.

‘Don’t touch it! The edges are smeared with p-poison!’

Mylnikov jerked his hand away.

‘What devil’s work is this?’

‘That is a shuriken, also known as a syarinken. A throwing weapon of the “Furtive Ones”, a sect of hereditary sp-spies that exists in Japan.’

‘Hereditary?’ The court counsellor started blinking very rapidly. ‘Is that like our Rykalov from the detective section? His great-grandfather served in the Secret Chancellery, back in Catherine the Great’s time.’

‘Something of the kind. So that’s why he jumped on to the kiosk …’

Fandorin’s last remark was addressed to himself, but Mylnikov jerked his head up and asked:

‘Why?’

‘To throw at standing targets. You and your “cat on a fence”. Well, you’ve made a fine mess of things, Mylnikov.’

‘Never mind the mess,’ said Mylnikov, with tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘If I made it, I’ll answer for it, it won’t be the first time. Zyablikov, Raspashnoi, Kasatkin, Möbius …’

A carriage came flying furiously into the square from the direction of Bolshaya Tartarskaya Street and a pale man with no hat tumbled out of it and shouted from a distance:

‘Evstratpalich! Disaster! Thrush has got away! He’s disappeared!’

‘But what about our plant?’

‘They found him with a knife in his side!’

The court counsellor launched into a torrent of obscenity so wild that someone in the crowd remarked respectfully:

‘He’s certainly making himself clear.’

But the engineer set off at a brisk stride towards the station.

‘Where are you going?’ shouted Mylnikov.

‘To the left luggage office. They won’t come for the melinite now.’

But Fandorin was mistaken.

The clerk was standing there, shifting from one foot to the other in front of the open door.

‘Well, did you catch the two boyos?’ he asked when he caught sight of Fandorin.

‘Which b-boyos?’

‘You know! The two who collected the baggage. I pressed on the button, like you told me to. Then I glanced into the gendarme gentlemen’s room. But when I looked, it was empty.’

The engineer groaned as if afflicted with a sudden, sharp pain.

‘How l-long ago?’

‘The first one came exactly at five. The second was seven or eight minutes later.’

Fandorin’s Breguet showed 5.29.

The court counsellor started swearing again, only not menacingly this time, but plaintively, in a minor key.

‘That was while we were creeping round the courtyards and basements,’ he wailed.

Fandorin summed up the situation in a funereal voice:

‘A worse debacle than Tsushima.’





The second syllable, entirely about railways

The interdepartmental conflict took place there and then, in the corridor. In his fury, Fandorin abandoned his usual restraint and told Mylnikov exactly what he thought about the Special Section, which was fine for spawning informers and agents provocateurs, but proved to be absolutely useless when it came to real work and caused nothing but problems.

‘You gendarmes are a fine lot too,’ snarled Mylnikov. ‘Why did your smart alecs abandon the ambush without any order? They let the bombers get away with the melinite. Now where do we look for them?’

Fandorin fell silent, stung either by the justice of the rebuke or that form of address – ‘you gendarmes’.

‘Our collaboration hasn’t worked out,’ said the man from the Department of Police, sighing. ‘Now you’ll make a complaint to your bosses about me, and I’ll make one to mine about you. Only none of that bumph is going to put things right. A bad peace is better than a good quarrel. Let’s do it this way: you look after your railway and I’ll catch Comrade Thrush. The way we’re supposed to do things according to our official responsibilities. That’ll be safer.’

Hunting for the revolutionaries who had established contact with Japanese intelligence obviously seemed far more promising to Mylnikov than pursuing unknown saboteurs who could be anywhere along an eight-thousand-verst railway line.

But Fandorin was so sick of the court counsellor that he replied contemptuously:

‘Excellent. Only keep well out of my sight.’

‘A good specialist always keeps out of sight,’ Evstratii Pavlovich purred, and he left.

And only then, bitterly repenting that he had wasted several precious minutes on pointless wrangling, did Fandorin set to work.

The first thing he did was question the receiving clerk in detail about the men who had presented the receipts for the baggage.

It turned out that the man who took the eight paper packages was dressed like a workman (grey collarless shirt, long coat, boots), but his face didn’t match his clothes – the clerk said he ‘wasn’t that simple’.

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘He was educated. Glasses, hair down to his shoulders, a big, bushy beard like a church sexton. Since when does a worker or a craftsman look like that? And he’s ill. His face is all white and he kept clearing his throat and wiping his lips with a handkerchief.’

The second recipient, who had shown up a few minutes after the one in glasses, sounded even more interesting to the engineer – he spotted an obvious lead here.

The man who took away the three wooden crates had been dressed in the uniform of a railway postal worker! The clerk could not possibly be mistaken about this – he had been working in the Department of Railways for a good few years.

Moustache, broad cheekbones, middle-aged. The recipient had a holster hanging at his side, which meant that he accompanied the mail carriage, in which, as everybody knew, sums of money and precious packages were transported.

Fandorin could already feel a presentiment of success, but he suppressed that dangerous mood and turned to Lieutenant Colonel Danilov, who had just arrived.

‘In the last twenty minutes, since half past five, have any trains set off?’

‘Yes indeed, the Harbin train. It left ten minutes ago.’

‘Then that’s where they are, our boyos. Both of them,’ the engineer declared confidently.

The lieutenant colonel was doubtful.

‘But maybe they went back into the city? Or they’re waiting for the next train, to Paveletsk? It’s at six twenty-five.’

‘No. It is no accident that they showed up at the same time, with just a few minutes between them. That is one. And note what time that was – dawn. What else of any importance happens at this station between five and six, apart from the departure of the Harbin train? And then, of course, the third point.’ The engineer’s voice hardened. ‘What would saboteurs want with the P-Paveletsk train? What would they blow up on the Paveletsk line? Hay and straw, radishes and carrots? No, our subjects have gone off on the Harbin train.’

‘Shall I send a telegram to stop the train?’

‘Under no circumstances. There is melinite on board. Who knows what these people are like? If they suspect something is wrong, they might blow it up. No delays, no unscheduled stops. The bombers are already on their guard, they’re nervous. No, tell me instead where the first stop is according to the timetable.’

‘It’s an express. So it will only stop in Vladimir – let me just take a look … At nine thirty.’

The powerful locomotive commandeered by Danilov overhauled the Harbin express at the border of the province of Moscow and thereafter maintained a distance of one verst, which it only reduced just before Vladimir.

It came flying on to the next line only a minute after the express. Fandorin jumped down on to the platform without waiting for the locomotive to stop. The scheduled train halted at the station for only ten minutes, so every minute was precious.

The engineer was met by Captain Lenz, the head of the Vladimir Railway Gendarmes Division, who had been briefed about everything in detail by telephone. He goggled wildly at Fandorin’s fancy dress (greasy coat, grey moustache and eyebrows, with temples that were also grey, only there had been no need to dye them) and wiped his sweaty bald patch with a handkerchief, but did not ask any questions.

‘Everything’s ready. This way, please.’

He reported about everything else on the run, as he tried to keep up with Erast Petrovich.

‘The trolley’s waiting. The team has been assembled. They’re keeping their heads down, as ordered …’

The station postal worker, who had been informed of the basic situation, was loitering beside a trolley piled high with correspondence. To judge from the chalky hue of his features, he was in a dead funk. The room was packed with light-blue uniforms – all the gendarmes were squatting down, and their heads were bent down low too. That was so that no one would see them from the platform, through the window, Fandorin realised.

He smiled at the postal worker.

‘Calm down, calm down, nothing unusual is going to happen.’

He took hold of the handles and pushed the trolley out on to the platform.

‘Seven minutes,’ the gendarmes captain whispered after him.

A man in a blue jacket stuck his head out of the mail carriage, which was coupled immediately behind the locomotive.

‘Asleep, are you, Vladimir?’ he shouted angrily. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

Long moustache, middle-aged. Broad cheekbones? I suppose so, Erast Petrovich thought to himself, and whispered to his partner again:

‘Stop shaking, will you? And yawn, you almost overslept.’

‘There you go … Couldn’t keep my eyes open. My second straight day on duty,’ the Vladimir man babbled, yawning and stretching.

Meanwhile the disguised engineer was quickly tossing the mail in through the open door and weighing things up, wondering whether he should grab the man with the long moustache round the waist and fling him on to the platform. Nothing could be easier.

He decided to wait first and check whether there were three wooden crates measuring 15 × 10 × 15 inches in there.

He was right to wait.

He climbed up into the carriage and began dividing the Vladimir post into three piles: letters, parcels and packages.

The inside of the carriage was a veritable labyrinth of heaps of sacks, boxes and crates.

Erast walked along one row, then along another, but he didn’t see the familiar items.

‘What are you doing wandering about?’ someone barked at him out of a dark passage. ‘Get a move on, look lively! Sacks over this way, square items over there. Are you new, or something?’

This was a surprise: another postman, also about forty years old, with broad cheekbones and a moustache. Which one was it? A pity he didn’t have the clerk from the left luggage office with him.

‘Yes, I’m new,’ Fandorin droned in a deep voice, as if he had a cold.

‘And old too, from the look of you.’

The second postal worker came over to the first one and stood beside him. They both had holsters with Nagant revolvers hanging on their belts.

‘Why are your hands shaking –on a spree yesterday, were you?’ the second one asked the Vladimir man.

‘Just a bit …’

‘But didn’t you say this was your second day on duty?’ the first one, with the long moustache, asked in surprise.

The second one stuck his head out of the door and looked at the station building.

Which one of them? Fandorin tried to guess, slipping rapidly along the stacks. Or is it neither? Where are the crates of melinite?

Suddenly there was a deafening clang as the second postman slammed the door shut and pushed home the bolt.

‘What’s up with you, Matvei?’ the one with the long moustache asked, surprised again.

Matvei bared his yellow teeth and cocked the hammer of his revolver with a click.

‘I know what I’m doing! Three blue caps in the window, and all of them staring this way! I’ve got a nose for these things!’

Incredible relief was what Erast Petrovich felt at that moment – so he hadn’t wasted his time smearing lead white on his eyebrows and moustache and it had been worthwhile breathing locomotive soot for three hours.

‘Matvei, have you gone crazy?’ the one with the long moustache asked in bewilderment, gazing into the glittering gun barrel.

The Vladimir postal worker got the idea straight away and pressed himself back against the wall.

‘Easy, Lukich. Don’t stick your nose in. And you, you louse, tell me, is this loader of yours a nark? I’ll kill you!’ The subject grabbed the local man by the collar.

‘They made me do it … Have pity … I’ve only one year to go to my pension …’ said the local man, capitulating immediately.

‘Hey, my good man, don’t be stupid!’ shouted Fandorin, sticking his head out from behind the crates. ‘There’s nowhere you can go anyway. Drop the wea …’

He hadn’t expected that – the subject fired without even bothering to hear him out.

The engineer barely managed to squat down in time, and the bullet whistled by just above his head.

‘Ah, you stinking rat!’ Fandorin heard the man that the saboteur had called Lukich cry indignantly.

There was another crash, then two voices mingling together – one groaning, the other whining.

Erast Petrovich crept to the edge of the stack and glanced out.

Things had taken a really nasty turn.

Matvei was ensconced in the corner, holding the revolver out in front of him. Lukich was lying on the floor, fumbling at his chest with bloody fingers. The Vladimir postal worker was squealing with his hands up over his face.

Bluish-grey powder smoke swayed gently in the ghastly light of the electric lamp.

From the position that Fandorin had occupied, nothing could have been easier than to shoot the villain, but he was needed alive and preferably not too badly damaged. So Erast Petrovich stuck out the hand holding his Browning and planted two bullets in the wall to the subject’s right.

Exactly as required, the subject retreated from the corner behind a stack of cardboard boxes.

Shooting continuously (three, four, five, six, seven), the engineer jumped out, ran and threw himself bodily at the boxes – they collapsed, burying the man hiding behind them.

After that it took only a couple of seconds.

Erast Petrovich grabbed a protruding leg in a cowhide boot, tugged the saboteur out into the light of day (of the electric lamp, that is) and struck him with the edge of his hand slightly above the collarbone.

He had one.

Now he had to catch the other one, in glasses, who had collected the paper parcels.

Only how was he to find him? And was he even on the train at all?

But he didn’t have to search for the man in glasses – he announced his own presence.

When Erast Petrovich drew back the bolt and pushed open the heavy door of the mail carriage, the first thing he saw was people running along the platform. And he heard frightened screams and women squealing.

Captain Lenz was standing beside the carriage, looking pale and behaving strangely: instead of looking at the engineer, who had just escaped deadly danger, the gendarme was squinting off to one side.

‘Take him,’ said Fandorin, dragging the saboteur, who had still not come round, to the carraige door. ‘And get a stretcher here, a man’s been wounded.’ He nodded at the stampeding public. ‘Were they alarmed by the shots?’

‘No, not that. It’s a real disaster, Mr Engineer. As soon as we heard the shots, my men and I rushed out on to the platform, thinking we could help you … Then suddenly there was a wild, crazy howl from that carriage there …’ Lenz pointed off to one side. ‘“I won’t surrender alive!” That’s when it started …’

Two gendarmes lugged away Matvei, under arrest, and Erast Petrovich jumped down on to the platform and looked in the direction indicated.

He saw a green third-class carriage with not a single soul anywhere near it – but he glimpsed white faces with wide-open mouths behind the windows.

‘He has a revolver. And a bomb,’ Lenz reported hastily. ‘He must have thought we came dashing out to arrest him. He took the conductor’s keys and locked the carriage at both ends. There are about forty people in there. He keeps shouting: “Just try getting in, I’ll blow them all up!”’

And at that moment there was a blood-curdling shriek from the carriage.

‘Get back! If anybody moves, I’ll blow them all to kingdom come!’

However, he hasn’t blown them up yet, the engineer mused. Although he has had the opportunity. ‘I tell you what, Captain. Carry all the crates out of the mail carriage quickly. We’ll work out later which ones are ours. And observe every possible precaution as you carry them. If the melinite detonates, you’ll be building a new station afterwards. That is, not you, of course, b-but somebody else. Don’t come after me. I’ll do this alone.’

Erast Petrovich hunched over and ran along the line of carriages. He stopped at the window from which the threats to ‘blow everyone to kingdom come’ had been made. It was the only one that was half open.

The engineer tapped delicately on the side of the carriage: tap-tap-tap.

‘Who’s there?’ asked a surprised voice.

‘Engineer Fandorin. Will you allow me to come in?’

‘What for?’

‘I’d like to t-talk to you.’

‘But I’m going to blow everything in here to pieces,’ said the voice, puzzled. ‘Didn’t you hear that? And then, how will you get in? I won’t open the door for anything.’

‘That’s all right, don’t worry. I’ll climb in through the window, just don’t shoot.’

Erast Petrovich nimbly hauled himself up and in through the window as far as his shoulders, then waited for a moment, so that the bomber could get a good look at his venerable grey hair, before creeping into the carriage slowly, very slowly.

Things looked bad: the young man in spectacles had thrust his revolver into his belt, and he was holding one of the black packages. In fact, he had already thrust his fingers inside it – Fandorin assumed he was clutching the glass detonator. One slight squeeze and the bomb would detonate, setting off the other seven. There they were, on the upper bunk, covered with sackcloth.

‘You don’t look like an engineer,’ said the youth, as pale as death, examining the dusty clothing of the false loader.

‘And you don’t look like a p-proletarian,’ Erast Petrovich parried.

The carriage had no compartments; it consisted of a long corridor with wooden benches on both sides. Unlike the people clamouring on the platform, the hostages were sitting quietly – they could sense the nearness of death. There was just a woman’s voice tearfully murmuring a prayer somewhere.

‘Quiet, you idiot, I’ll blow the whole place up!’ the youth shouted in a terrible deep voice, and the praying broke off.

He’s dangerous, extremely dangerous, Fandorin realised as he looked into the terrorist’s wide, staring eyes. He’s not playing for effect, not throwing a fit of hysterics – he really will blow us up.

‘Why the delay?’ asked Erast Petrovich.

‘Eh?’

‘I can see that you are not afraid of death. So why are you putting it off? Why don’t you crush the detonator? There is something stopping you. What?’

‘You’re strange,’ said the young man in glasses. ‘But you’re right … This is all wrong. It isn’t how it should all happen … I’m selling myself cheap. It’s frustrating. And she won’t get her ten thousand …’

‘Who, your mother? Who will she not get the money from, the Japanese?’

‘What mother!’ the youth cried, gesturing angrily. ‘Ah, what a wonderful plan it was! She would have racked her brains, wondered who did it, where it was from. Then she would have guessed and blessed my memory. Russia would have cursed me, but she would have blessed me!’

‘The one you love?’ Fandorin said with a nod, starting to understand. ‘She is unhappy, trapped, this money would save her, allow her to start a new life?’

‘Yes! You can’t imagine what a hideous abomination Samara is! And her parents and brothers! Brutes, absolute brutes! Never mind that she doesn’t love me, that’s all right! Who could love a living corpse, coughing up his own lungs? But I’ll reach out to her even from the next world, I’ll pull her out of the quagmire … That is, I would have done …’

The young man groaned and started shaking so violently that the black paper rustled in his hands.

‘She won’t get the money because you failed to blow up the bridge? Or the tunnel?’ Erast Petrovich asked quickly, keeping his eyes fixed on that deadly package.

‘A bridge, the Alexander Bridge. How do you know that? But what difference does it make? Yes, the samurai won’t pay. I shall die in vain.’

‘So you are doing all this because of her, for the ten thousand?’

The youth in glasses shook his head.

‘Not only that. I want to take revenge on Russia. It’s a vile, abominable country!’

Fandorin sat down on the bench, crossed his legs and shrugged.

‘You can’t do Russia any great harm now. Well, you’ll blow up the carriage. Kill and maim forty poor third-class passengers, and the lady of your heart will be left to languish in Samara.’ He paused to give the young man a chance to reflect on that, then said forcefully: ‘I have a better idea. You give me the explosive, and then the girl you love will get her ten thousand. And you can leave Russia to her fate.’

‘You’ll deceive me,’ the consumptive whispered.

‘No. I give you my word of honour,’ said Erast Petrovich, and he said it in a voice that made it impossible not to believe.

Patches of ruddy colour bloomed on the bomber’s cheeks.

‘I don’t want to die in a prison hospital. Better here, now.’

‘Just as you wish,’ Fandorin said quietly.

‘Very well. I’ll write her a note …’

The youth pulled a notebook out of his pocket and scribbled in it feverishly with a pencil. The parcel with the bomb was lying on the bench and now Fandorin could easily have grabbed it. But the engineer didn’t budge.

‘Only, please, be brief,’ he said. ‘I feel sorry for the passengers. After all, every second is torment for them. God forbid, someone might have a stroke.’

‘Yes, yes, just a moment …’

He finished writing, folded the page neatly and handed it over.

‘It has the name and address on it …’

Only then did Fandorin take the bomb and hand it out through the window, after first calling the gendarmes. The other seven followed it: the youth in glasses took hold of them carefully and handed them to Erast Petrovich, who lowered them out through the window.

‘And now go out, please,’ said the doomed man, cocking the hammer of his revolver. ‘And remember: you gave your word of honour.’

Looking into the youth’s bright-blue eyes, Erast Petrovich realised that it was pointless to try to change his mind, and walked towards the door.

The shot rang out behind his back almost immediately.

The engineer arrived back at home, feeling weary and sad, as the day was ending. At the station in Moscow he was handed a telegram from Petersburg: ‘All’s well that ends well but we need the Japanese I hope the ten thousand is a joke’.

That meant he would have to pay the Belle Dame sans merci of Samara out of his own pocket, but that was not why he was feeling sad – he simply could not stop thinking about the young suicide, with all his love and hate. And Erast Petrovich’s thoughts also kept coming back again and again to the man who had thought of a way to make practical use of someone else’s misery.

They hadn’t learned much about this resourceful individual from the arrested postman. Nothing new at all, really. They still had no idea where to look for the man. And it was even more difficult to predict at which point he would strike his next blow.

Fandorin was met in the doorway of his government apartment by his valet. Observing neutrality had been particularly difficult for Masa today. All the time his master was away, the Japanese had muttered sutras and he had even tried to pray in front of an icon, but now he was the very image of dispassion. He ran a quick glance over Erast Petrovich to see whether he was unhurt. Seeing that he was, Masa screwed his eyes up in relief and immediately said indifferently in Japanese:

‘Another letter from the head of the municipal gendarmes.’

The engineer frowned as he unfolded the note, in which Lieutenant General Charme insistently invited him to come to dinner today at half past seven. The note ended with the words: ‘Otherwise, I really shall take offence’.

Yesterday there had been an identical invitation, left without a reply for lack of time.

It was awkward. An old, distinguished general. And in an adjacent government department – he couldn’t offend him.

‘Wash, shave, dinner jacket, white tie, top hat,’ the engineer told his servant in a sour voice.