by Boris Akunin
He walked along the wide corridor, up to the piano nobile, along another corridor, round a corner. On his right was the entrance to the ladies' section, on the left the private rooms began, with the service staircase beyond them. Before he entered the room, Fandorin surveyed the location once again and was satisfied. If they needed to withdraw in haste, it was very convenient: one provided covering fire while the other ran to the corner. Then the roles were reversed. Short sprints: the risk of taking a bullet was minimal. And things would probably not get as far as shooting.
'Are there many visitors in the l-ladies' section at about this time?' he asked his guide, just in case.
The man smiled in a most polite manner, with just the slightest hint of playfulness.
'Plenty as yet, but there won't be any more coming in. It's a bit late already for the fair sex.'
'Is this their way in and their way out?' Fandorin asked in alarm.
'Certainly not, sir. The way out's on the other side. Specially arranged. A woman, Your Worship, doesn't take kindly to being observed after the bathhouse, with a towel over her hair. Instead of going out through the main door, they prefer to duck into the sleigh, and adieu!'
Erast Petrovich gave the man a coin and went into his room.
As a young rake awaits his ardent tryst, so have I waited all the day for when ... something or other... in my secret basement!' Pozharsky greeted him boisterously. The naked prince was sitting in an armchair with a cigar clenched in his teeth.
Standing on the table in front of him were a bottle of Cachet Blanc, two glasses and a bowl of fruit, with a newspaper lying open beside them.
'Champagne?' Fandorin asked, raising one eyebrow slightly. 'Do we have some cause for celebration?'
'I do,' Gleb Georgievich replied mysteriously. 'But let's start at the beginning and not get ahead of ourselves. Get your clothes off and take a dip' - he pointed to the small pool in the floor -'and afterwards we'll have a talk. How about you - have you brought any booty?'
Erast Petrovich glanced at the locked door that led into the common hall and replied evasively: 'I shall have some s-soon.'
Pozharsky gave him a curious glance and wound a napkin round the bottle. 'Well, why are you standing there like a buyer at a slave market? Get undressed.'
It had not been Erast Petrovich's intention to get undressed, since his plan envisaged the likelihood of a hasty retreat, but to parade fully clothed in front of a completely naked man seemed stupid and improper. What if the trick completely failed to work? Should he just carry on standing there in his jacket? Fortunately, his comfortable and simple sports costume could be donned in mere seconds - after all he could ignore the leotard, the waistcoat, the cuffs and the collar.
'What's this - are you shy?' The prince laughed. 'That's not at all like you.'
The State Counsellor pulled off his clothes and put them on the divan, placing both revolvers and the stiletto on top of them as if it were an afterthought.
Pozharsky whisded: 'A serious arsenal. I'm a great respecter of prudence. I'm exactly the same. Will you show me your toys later? And I'll show you mine. But business first. Jump in, jump in. One thing is no obstacle to the other.'
Erast Petrovich glanced round at the door again and jumped into the pool, but he didn't splash around in the water for long; instead, he climbed out straight away.
'You're a genuine Antinous,' said the prince, surveying Fan-dorin's physique appreciatively. 'This is a fine outlandish setting we have for an operational conference. To work?'
'To work.'
The State Counsellor sat down in an armchair and lit up a cigar himself, but he kept his leg muscles tensed, ready to leap up just as soon as Masa knocked on the door.
'How was Diana?' Pozharsky asked with a strangely jovial smile. 'Did she confess her sins?'
Fandorin thought the intonation of the question sounded strange, and he paused before replying.
Allow me t-to inform you of my conclusions a little later. I have serious grounds to hope that the m-main culprit will be exposed today'
However, these words failed to produce the anticipated effect on the other man.
'But I know how to find our elusive CG,' the prince parried, 'and very soon now I shall snap it up.'
Erast Petrovich felt himself turning pale. If Pozharsky was telling the truth, it meant that he had found a shorter and more effective way to solve this complex puzzle.
Suppressing his wounded amour propre, Fandorin said: 'C-Congratulations, that is a great success. But how—'
He didn't finish, because at that moment there was a loud shout outside the door. He couldn't make out the words, but there could be no doubt that it was Masa shouting. And that could only mean one thing: the plan had failed, and failed in some extremely unpleasant way.
Erast Petrovich leapt to his feet, about to make a dash for his clothes, but suddenly there was a deafening crash as the door leading to the pool was torn off its hinges by a powerful blow.
Two men came hurtling through into the room, with an entire mob pressing in behind them. Fandorin didn't need a time-and-motion study to realise he would never reach his clothes or his weapons. He could only hope there would be enough time to leap out into the corridor.
Pozharsky pulled a small double-barrelled pistol out from under the newspaper and fired twice. The leading attacker threw his arms up and ran on for a few more steps from sheer inertia, collapsing face down in the pool, and the prince flung away his discharged weapon and dashed after Fandorin with astounding agility.
They flew through the doorway simultaneously, bumping their naked shoulders together. Wood dust showered down on to Erast Petrovich's head as a bullet slammed into the lintel of the door, and the next moment the two leaders of the investigation tumbled out into the corridor. Without even looking round, Pozharsky set off to the right. There was no point in running in the same direction: the initial battle plan with alternating short sprints under covering fire had been rendered meaningless by the lack of any weapons.
The State Counsellor dashed to the left, towards the service stairway, although he had no idea where it led to.
As he grabbed hold of the banister with one hand, crumbs of stone spurted from the wall. Fandorin glanced back briefly, saw three men running after him and sprinted upwards - he had spotted a grille across the steps leading down.
He covered one flight in huge bounds, three steps at a time -a padlocked door. Another two flights - another lock.
He could hear the clatter of hasty footsteps below him.
There was only one more flight now - and there was the dark form of a door on the upper landing.
It was locked! A curved rod of iron, a padlock.
Erast Petrovich grabbed hold of the metal rod and, following the precepts of the teaching of spiritual power, imagined that it was paper. He jerked the feeble rod towards himself, and the lock suddenly flew off to one side, clanging down the stone steps.
There was no rime to celebrate. Fandorin ran into a dark room with a low, slanting ceiling. Through the little windows he could see sloping roof tiles glinting dully in the moonlight.
Another door, but with no lock, and flimsy. One kick was enough.
The Deputy for Special Assignments ran out on to the roof, and for a moment the icy wind took his breath away. But the cold was not the worst thing. A rapid glance around was enough for him to realise that he had absolutely nowhere left to go.
Fandorin dashed to one edge of the roof and saw a brighdy lit street with people and carriages far below.
He rushed to the opposite side. Down below he saw a snow-covered yard.
There was no time left for further exploration. Three shadows detached themselves from the attic superstructure and slowly moved towards the doomed man standing frozen on the edge of the precipice.
'You're a fast runner, Mr State Counsellor,' one of them said when they were still some distance away. Fandorin could not make out his face. 'Let's see if you can fly too.'
/> Erast Petrovich turned his back to the shadows, because it was painful and senseless to look at them. He glanced down.
Fly?
The highest level of mastery in the clan of the Stealthy Ones, who had taught Fandorin the art of controlling his spirit and his body, was the trick known as 'The Flight of the Hawk'. Erast Petrovich had often perused drawings in old manuscripts, which depicted the technique of this incredible trick in great detail. When the kingdoms of the land of the Root of the Sun fought an internecine war lasting many centuries, the Stealthy Ones were regarded as spies nonpareil. It was nothing to them to scramble up sheer walls, infiltrate a besieged fortress and discover all the secrets of the defence. It was far more difficult, however, to get away with the information gathered. The spies did not always have time to lower a rope ladder, or even a silken cord. It was for this that the Flight of the Hawk had been invented.
The instruction of the teaching was: 'Jump without pushing off, smoothly, so that the gap between you and the wall is two foot lengths, no more and no less. Hold your body perfectly straight. Count to five, then kick your heels hard against the wall, turn over in the air and land, not forgetting to offer a prayer to the Buddha Amida.'
It was said that the masters of olden times could perform the Flight of the Hawk from a wall as high as a hundred siaku, that is fifteen sazhens, but Erast Petrovich did not believe that. With a count of only five, the body would drop no more than five or six sazhens. The somersault that followed would, of course, soften the impact, but even so it could hardly be possible to survive if you jumped from a height of more than seven or eight sazhens, and to survive at all you would have to be blessed with incredible agility and the special favour of the Buddha Amida.
However, this was not an appropriate moment for scepticism. The leisurely footfalls behind him were drawing closer - the nihilist gentlemen had no more reason to hurry now.
How many siakus was this? The State Counsellor tried to work it out. No more than fifty Absolute child's play for a medieval Japanese spy.
Fixing firmly in his mind that he had to jump without pushing off, he drew himself erect and took a step into empty space.
Erast Fandorin found the sensation of flight repugnant. His stomach attempted to leap out through his throat, and his lungs froze, unable to breathe either in or out; but all that was of no consequence. The important thing was to count.
At 'five' Fandorin kicked back as hard as he could with both feet, felt the scorching contact with a hard surface and performed the relatively simple manoeuvre of 'The Attacking Snake', known in the European circus as a double somersault.
In his mind Fandorin had just enough time to recite 'Namu Amida Butsu* before he stopped seeing or hearing anything.
* 'I praise the Buddha Amida'
Later his senses reawoke, but not all of them. It was very cold, there was nothing to breathe and he still couldn't see anything. For a moment Erast Petrovich was afraid that because of his prayer he had been consigned to the Buddhist Hell of Ice, where it is always cold and dark. But it was hardly likely that anyone in the Hell of Ice would know Russian, and that was definitely the language he could hear being spoken by those voices somewhere up in the heavens.
'Schwartz, where is he? He disappeared into thin air.'
"There he is!' cried another voice, very young and clear. 'Lying in a snowdrift! He just flew a long way out.'
It was only then that Fandorin, stunned by his fall, realised that he had not died and not gone blind, but was lying face down in a deep snowdrift. His eyes, his mouth and even his nose were packed with snow, and that was why it was dark and he couldn't breathe.
'Let's go,' someone up above him decided. 'If he's not dead, he must have broken every bone in his body' And the heavens fell silent.
He certainly hadn't broken all his bones - the State Counsellor realised that when he managed to get up on all fours, and then stand erect. Perhaps the art of the Stealthy Ones had saved him, or perhaps the Buddha Amida, but most likely it had been the opportunely located snowdrift.
He staggered across the yard, through the passage, and out into Zvonarny Lane - straight into the arms of a police constable.
'Oh Lordy Lord, people have completely taken leave of their senses,' the constable gasped at the sight of a naked man caked in snow. 'Shooting off guns with no rhyme or reason and bathing in the buff in snowdrifts! Right then, my good sir, it's a night in the station for you.'
Erast Petrovich staggered on a little further, clutching at the lapels of the coarse greatcoat rimed with frost, and began slowly sinking to the ground.
CHAPTER 12
Giraffes
There were problems with the move to a new apartment - the police spies were running such a fine-toothed comb through the whole of Moscow that it was too dangerous to turn to sympathisers for help. There was no way of telling which of them was under surveillance,
They decided to stay at Vorontsovo Polye, especially in view of one consideration: If TG was so well informed about the gendarmes' plans, why make his relationship with the group any more complicated than it was? Whoever the mysterious correspondent might be, and whatever goals he was pursuing, he was clearly an ally, and a truly invaluable one.
The previous day's operation at the Petrosov Baths could hardly have gone worse. First, they had lost Nail, killed outright by a bullet from the deputy director of police. That preternaturally evasive gentleman had got away again, even though Green himself had led the pursuit; and the job with State Counsellor Fandorin had been botched too. Emelya, Schwartz and Nobel should have gone down into the yard and finished him off. The deep snow could have cushioned his fall. It was quite possible that the Governor General's deputy had got away with minor injuries like broken legs and ruptured kidneys.
The evening before, when the Combat Group, its numbers enlarged by the Muscovites who had passed the test of the expropriation, was preparing for the operation at the Petrosov Baths, Needle had brought the chemicals and the detonators from Aronson. So today Green had set up a laboratory in the study and started work on augmenting his arsenal. He made a burner for heating the paraffin out of a kerosene lamp and adapted a coffee-grinder for grinding up the picronitric acid, while the place of a retort was taken by an olive-oil jar, and a samovar made a tolerable stall. Bullfinch made the casings and filled them with screws.
The others took it easy. Emelya was still reading his Count of Monte Cristo and only looked into the study occasionally to share his feelings about what he had read. The novices - Marat, Beaver, Schwartz and Nobel - had nothing to offer in any case. They settled down to a game of cards in the kitchen. Although they were only playing for finger-flicks to the forehead, the game was heated and noisy, with plenty of laughter and shouting. That was all right. They were only young lads, high-spirited - let them have a bit of fun.
Putting together the explosive mixture was painstaking work; it took many hours and required total concentration. One slip of the hand and the entire apartment would be blown sky-high, taking the attic and the roof with it.
Some time after two in the morning, when the process was only half-completed, the telephone rang.
Green picked up the earpiece and waited to see who would speak.
Needle.
'The private lecturer has fallen ill,' she said in a worried voice. 'It's very strange. When I got back from your apartment I took a look at his windows through my binoculars, just to check - in case his generosity with the chemicals might not have gone unnoticed. I saw the curtains were closed.' She suddenly broke off, perturbed by his silence. 'Hello, is that you, Mr Sievers?'
'Yes,' he replied calmly, remembering that closed curtains meant 'disaster'. 'This morning? Why didn't you let me know?'
'What for? If he's been taken, there's nothing we can do to help. We'd only make things worse.'
'Then why now?'
'Five minutes ago one of the curtains was opened!' Needle exclaimed. 'I immediately phoned the Ostozhenka Street apartm
ent and asked for Professor Brandt, as agreed. Aronson said: "I'm afraid you have the wrong number." Then he said it again, as if he was asking me to hurry. His voice sounded pitiful, it was trembling.'
The code phrase meant that Needle should come to the apartment alone - Green remembered that. What could have happened to Aronson?
‘I’ll go,' he said, 'and check.'
'No, you mustn't. It's too risky. And why should you? He can't be in serious danger, and we have to take care of you. I'm going to Ostozhenka Street, and then I'll come to your apartment.'
'All right.'
He went back to his improvised laboratory, but a mounting sense of alarm prevented him from concentrating on the job at hand.
A strange business: first the signal for disaster, and then suddenly an urgent summons. He shouldn't have sent Needle. It was a mistake.
'I'm going out,' he told Bullfinch, and stood up. 'Something I have to do. Emelya's in charge. Don't touch the mixture.'
'Can I go with you?' Bullfinch asked eagerly. 'Emelya's reading, the others are playing cards, what am I going to do? I've done all the tins. I'm bored.'
Green thought for a moment and decided: Why not? If anything went wrong, at least he could warn their comrades.
'If you like. Let's go.'
From the street everything looked clear.
First they drove past in a cab and examined the windows. Nothing suspicious. One curtain closed.
Then they separated and walked along Ostozhenka Street. No idly loitering yard-keepers, no sharp-eyed vendors of spiced honey punch, no one casually strolling by.
The building was definitely not under surveillance.