by Pavel Kornev
"Drop it!" I've already found your tool. I'm just deciding the best way to beat out the answers I need.
The killer didn't say a single word.
I finished my hot bitter coffee, placed the mug on the table and walked into the back room, leaving the door wide open. I threw the Webley-Scott and silencer back into the suitcase with the rubber mask, having decided not to rely on an unfamiliar weapon. I pulled the box down from the lower shelf. It was full of smoke bombs. Then I wondered about the case, which was surprisingly heavy. I carried it into the room.
I set the case on the table, broke the lock with my knife, threw back the lid and stared in astonishment at the even rows of lenses. Just on the upper level, there were at the very least three or four hundred of them, but the Irishman seem to be an oculist.
I pulled one of the transparent eyepieces out to try and raised it to my face, discovering that it made everything in the basement blurry. I looked through the next and the picture was the same with just one exception. The Irishman bound to the armchair was suddenly filled with an utterly unreal clarity, while everything else was blurred. My eyes quickly started to ache and fill with tears.
Returning the lens to its place, I saw a note opposite its nest made in faded calligraphic handwriting: "7 ft."
Seven feet? There was approximately two meters between me and the killer; I checked the other lenses from the edge row and discovered that they all gave the ability to focus my gaze on objects a defined distance away.
Most of the glass in the other rows was colored. They muted colors, sometimes to the point the world was turned into a black and white cinema. The purpose of the strange lenses was a mystery to me until I looked through the orange one at the far wall. I realized I could clearly make out the minutest details of its rectangular bricks through the darkness of the basement.
Color filters?!
I continued testing and soon was convinced of my theory. What was more, combinations of glass allowed me to achieve astonishing results!
Everything fell into place. I could now explain Lynch’s unbelievable accuracy when he had sunk two bullets into my overcoat on the coat rack. Before going into the bar, he had placed color filters into the eye holes of the rubber mask based on my coat.
One pair of lenses gave the killer unusually sharp vision, and the other gave him the ability to see through the smoke screen, while the third kept the victim from getting out of view. He just had to know in advance what shade of clothing they preferred.
In the bar, I had removed the overcoat, which had saved my life. My blue suit had simply blended in with the surrounding objects, because his color filters had focused in on the leather of the overcoat.
After wiping the tears from my eyes, I tapped the lens on the iron rim of the suitcase in contemplation and noticed Sean Lynch clench his teeth as if that slight jingling did him unbearable harm.
And perhaps it did?
"It must have been hard to get such an expansive collection?" I chuckled. "In this day and age, it can be quite hard to find a skilled alchemist."
The killer stayed silent, but I could still see his jaw bones grinding.
I threw the lens at the wall and it shattered into a few pieces.
A large drop rolled down the gunman's cheek.
"Some of them must be especially valuable, I suppose." I egged him on. "That orange one, for example. What'd it run you?"
The Irishman kept quiet, then I squeezed the little glass in my fingers and broke it in two. One of the halves delaminated, but the thick canvas gloves protected my skin from cuts.
"Enough!" Sean Lynch was pushed to his limit.
I left the suitcase with lenses, picked up the mug of cold coffee from the table, took a long sip and demanded:
"Tell me!"
I had managed to find the key to the killer, and we both knew it, but he just smiled a crooked smile.
"And why do I need that? A rich man cannot take his wealth into the kingdom of heaven."
"You'd do well to also remember the eye of the needle!" I grew angry. "Do not commit murder! There's your commandment!"
"The ends justify the means."
I took another lens from the suitcase, threw it under my foot and crushed it with my heel.
"A dead man has no need for lenses," Lynch exhaled hoarsely, convulsing at the sound of the glass crunching as if I was cleaving the lens of his real eye.
"It would be too bad to be left with a bunch of broken glass if we do manage to agree, though, right?" I chuckled but decided not to push too hard on the killer and waved a hand. "So, tell me your conditions!"
The Irishman sniffled his broken nose and shook his head.
"Come on, what conditions could I possibly have? You’re a funny guy."
I pulled a handful of lenses at random from the suitcase and threw them on the ground, then started breaking them one by one with a little hammer from the back room.
"Enough!" Sean Lynch reached a shout. "Stop it! Stop it now!"
"Then start talking."
"I'm only alive while I keep my tongue behind my teeth!"
I waved the hammer a few times to test him and said:
"You're only alive until I run out of lenses. Because as soon as I get started on your bones, there will be no more reason to keep you alive. Sean, do you know how many bones there are in the human body?"
Lynch did have a pretty good idea. I could tell by how suddenly his face changed.
"And what reason do you have to keep me alive now?"
I sighed.
People need hope. They're glad to deceive, and what is more they ask directly to be deceived, lured by the imaginary possibility of salvation.
The irony of fate was that I truly did have a good reason to spare Lynch, if he gave up his client. And that reason was Princess Anna’s mission.
"Kill," she had said. I was not ready to end a person’s life just because my crown-bearing cousin asked. And although enlisting Lynch to do it was just the very slightest bit less immoral, that now seemed like an ideal way out of the ethical dead-end.
At the end of the day, if this person had been dumb enough to cross the future Empress, he was the one most at fault in his own sudden death.
Yes, beyond hope, people need justifications for their miserable actions. And I had found justifications for myself.
"Most of all I now want to smash your head with this hammer," I said directly to the Irishman, "but that would be wrong. You're just a tool. And you could be of use to me."
"Excuse me?" Lynch laughed.
"You're too well-prepared to be some madman. That means you're working for money. But you live in a pigsty, so you're clearly not moved by the sin of greed. You're ideological. So, judge for yourself: what benefit can you do for your cause if you get your head smashed in with your own hammer in this basement?"
The killer winced:
"What do you suggest?"
"You tell me who hired you. I'll give you a job, paid in cash."
"That isn't right. I don't work against clients!"
"I'll be dealing with your client myself," I snapped. "I'll tell you the name of your target tomorrow. You'll have to work without preparation."
"So, you'll simply take me at my word? What if I lie, just take a name off the top of my head?"
"There aren't so many people who could wish death on me!" I cut him off. "I will not take you at your word. I'll check. And you'll be watched, don't doubt it."
"Not a very tempting perspective."
I poked the tip of my boot at the lens case in disgust and scratched my face, itching due to the theatrical beard.
"It's better than dying on a heap of broken glass."
"I'll be avenged," Sean Lynch jerked up his head in pride.
"Do you think the fighters for the independence of Ireland have nothing better to do?" I laughed.
He turned gloomy.
"Life and work or pain and death," I said. "The choice is yours."
"Alright," Lynch consented. "It was a
cop. Senior Inspector Moran."
"Devil!" I was blown away. "You work for Department Three?!"
"No!" the Irishman shot out quickly. "No, he simply left me with no choice!"
I turned around and whipped the hammer at the wall full force.
Devil! Bastian Moran hadn't been able to get me behind bars and had decided to take justice into his own hands! What a twofaced viper!
And what a fool I was! All this time, the solution was right under my nose, but I didn't put forth enough mental effort to find it! Silver bullets! I was shot with silver bullets, but there weren't very many people who knew or even suspected that I was a werebeast. I could have found who hired me by process of elimination.
I took a few loud sighs, patted my jacket pockets and discovered that the notepad and pencil were still in my overcoat.
"Have you got a pencil and paper?" I asked Lynch.
"Whatever for?" the killer got on guard.
"You're going to write a statement to the inspector general..."
"No!"
I didn't have time to insist: I heard the chirring of a powder engine outside. Ramon's armored car had entered the courtyard, ruining all my plans in an instant. Now, the killer would have to be brought out the main entrance in full view of all his neighbors.
I stood behind Lynch and warned:
"If you so much as twitch, I'll blow your brains out!" After that, I undid his wrists from the armrests and immediately commanded: "Hands! Hands behind your back! And head down! Step to it!"
The killer obediently leaned forward, then I bound his wrists together, trying to tie the knots as tight as I could.
"What are you doing?!" Lynch groaned, already hearing the sound of the nearby armored vehicle just as clearly as me. "I cannot go to the police!"
"That isn't the police!" I reassured the man, freeing his legs with the pen knife. "They came for me. Stand up!"
"Eyes!" the killer reminded me.
I tore the blindfold off his face, threw a jacket on his bound arms and pushed him to the door.
"Walk! And no stupid stuff! I need you, but if you twitch, I'll shoot you through the head!"
To confirm the gravity of my words, I cocked my Webley-Fosbery.
Sean Lynch slumped and walked toward the exit.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Somewhere safe," I answered and demanded: "Face to the wall!"
The killer obeyed, then I undid the lock and, throwing open the door, pushed him onto the stairs.
"Out!"
And we walked to the idling armored vehicle.
9
WALKING TEN METERS–what could be easier for a healthy person in the very prime of their life? But while escorting a dangerous recidivist, those very ten meters could become a road to the afterlife. So, when the Irishman suddenly started fumbling on the stairs, I stuck the barrel of my revolver into his lower back and placed my free hand between his shoulder blades.
"Walk!"
Instead of that, Lynch stepped back and gasped:
"What the devil?!"
"Never seen an armored vehicle before?" I barked, looking from behind the killer's shoulder into the yard and instantly losing all my confidence. The barrels of a Gatling gun were spinning with a measured hum on the tower of the self-propelled carriage. It was aimed at the stairs.
Luckily, I was standing lower than Lynch.
The silence of the sleepy little courtyard was blown to smithereens by the sudden thunder of a machine-gun burst. Blood spattered on my face. The Irishman's body, honeycombed by high-caliber bullets, collapsed on me from above and dragged me down with its dead weight. I slithered out from under him like an adder, crawled into the basement, slammed the door and did the lock.
A moment later, the heavy boards exploded into a cloud of splinters! The bullets that pierced them flew around the basement with a hum, ricocheting off the stone floor; I wasn't hit by a single one, but it was just a matter of time.
A light spot of broken window met my eye on the other side of the basement and I pushed off the wall and was already making my first step when I heard an echoing boom on the stairs. An explosion ripped the door off its hinges, and the shockwave slammed into my back, knocking me off my feet. I somersaulted along the floor.
My ear drums popped into a cottony silence and nasty echo, but I didn't lose my consciousness and even managed to stand to my feet. Seeking the revolver that flew out of my hands, I walked to it and, immediately, two hand grenades were thrown into the doorway.
I barely managed to take shelter in the back room before a double explosion thundered out and shrapnel flew into the bare stone walls of the basement.
I was reminded of the albino saying: "You haven't got time!" I spit an oath and yanked the pump rifle from the tube. I stuck it out into the front room and just in the nick of time. In the smoke and dust, I could just barely make out a policeman wearing a hard helmet and armored cuirass.
I shot, aiming for his legs. I just didn't want to commit the sin of killing a former colleague. Also, this caliber wouldn't get through the cuirass...
The constable dropped his semi-automatic rifle and collapsed on the steps, squeezing his thigh wound with his hands. I pumped again and got off another shot. This time, intentionally higher up in an attempt to scare off the others. I heard return fire thunder out from the stairs, then the wounded constable was pulled outside, and another pair of grenades flew in.
In that time, I managed to load rounds into the carbine's magazine. I stuck my head out of the back room right after the explosion, but immediately hid again. The police had broken the boards out of one of the windows and stuck the tube of a Lewis gun into the basement. A nonstop rain of bullets thundered out, putting holes in furniture and breaking rubble out of stone walls.
Under the cover of machine-gun fire, the constables could have thrown grenades at me no problem. But before they managed, my eye caught on the wooden box of smoke grenades. Not wasting time, I picked up the weighty cylinder, pulled the pin and threw it into the basement, then sent another after it.
In an instant, the room was filled with an impenetrable acrid gray smoke. In order not to suffocate, I tore off the blood-spattered fake beard, pulled the rubber mask onto my face and clipped the canvas hose to the tank of compressed air, praying to myself that the Irishman had not used it all up.
I was in luck. The tank was not empty. Sticking it into the knapsack hanging over my shoulder, I gathered some smoke bombs from the killer's suitcase and glanced out the cracked door. The lenses over the normal ones allowed me to see the Webley-Fosbery I'd lost in the fall through the impenetrable smoke. As soon as the Lewis gun finally went silent, I grabbed the revolver and ran as fast as I could to the window opposite the entrance I'd broken out earlier.
Throwing a smoke bomb into the front yard ahead of me, I got up onto the table, which was littered with shards of broken ceramic, then climbed onto the wide window sill. Bashing with the case, I broke out the rest of the boards and crawled into the shallow stone niche. Without delay, I jumped out of it like a spooked rabbit and dashed into the bushes.
The front yard was already fully immersed in acrid gray haze, but a strong wind was dispersing the smoke quickly. So, I first tossed a bomb toward the courtyard exit, then another onto the street. Finally, I rolled over the short fence and dashed toward the building opposite.
It was swelteringly hot in the rubber mask and my breathing seized quickly. The glass eyeholes were covered with perspiration, but the roar of the powder engine gave me speed. I heard a knock, a screech and an echo, as if the driver of the armored vehicle had run into a streetlight pole due to bad visibility, and the machine gun started thundering blindly. Not feeling my legs under me, I ran into the neighboring courtyard, grabbed the last two smoke bombs from the bag and threw them in different directions to confuse my pursuers and, under the cover of the thick dark gray smog, ran up to the fence, took a bit more air into my chest and tore the rubber mask off my face. I stu
ck the breathing apparatus in the killer's case and threw the canvas gloves in the same place. The blood-soaked woolen coat I simply tossed on a pile of trash.
After that, I crawled over the fence and hurried away, coughing and spitting as I ran.
I got away! I actually got away!
A QUARTER HOUR LATER, when I reached the Phoenix, Ramon Miro was sitting calmly at one of the tables and eating beef stroganoff with gusto. Upon hearing the door fly open, he tore himself from the plate for a moment, but immediately returned to his refection.
"A mug of black coffee," I asked the waiter, taking a seat opposite the hulking man and sliding the killer's case under the table.
"I see you couldn’t wait and kicked up some noise?" Ramon said, not hiding his dismay.
"You took a long time."
"Traffic," my former partner explained. "When we found the building, there was already machine gun fire. Apologies, Leo, but we were not equipped for a firefight with the police. In any case, I decided to check your favorite snack shop, saw your overcoat and decided to wait. I figured, if you did manage to get your butt out of there, you'd surely come back for the coat."
I nodded.
The waiter placed the coffee before me; I took a sip of the hot drink and didn't taste anything but bitterness. I had been drinking too much coffee all day.
"Sugar and cream, please," I asked. When the waiter had left, I rubbed my temples and asked Ramon: "And how are things there now?"
The hulking man understood before I finished and shrugged his shoulders.
"I don't know. We didn't get too close. What did you do?"
I poured some cream and two lumps of sugar into my mug and started stirring in concentration.
"At first everything was going well," I said after a long silence. "But I miscalculated a bit. Lynch was working for Moran..."
"The senior inspector?!" Ramon shot out.
"Shh!" I shushed. "Yes, senior inspector of Department Three, Bastian Moran. He somehow found out about your questioning and sent people to cover his tracks. They didn't even ask any questions, just opened fire straight off."
"Did Moran want to kill you?" The hulking man pushed his plate away and got up from the table. "Seriously?!"