by Pavel Kornev
"Thirty or forty thousand," I answered, in that I didn't see it as especially secret information. "Definitely not more than forty."
"You accumulated that much debt in six years?" Mr. Levinson looked at me with respect. "What a talent you've got!"
All I could do was laugh.
"A large part of that was left to me by my father. And interest on that debt had also run up to a pretty respectable sum."
"It would do you no credit, but you could have refused to accept responsibility for his debts."
"That’s actually not true. Dad had the custom of taking loans against my inheritance, and his partners," I sighed, "are not the kind to easily come to terms with losing so much."
"And you mortgaged your house, which is of no value, because of this quarantine, with the condition that you would pay it all back only after you get control over the family fund?"
"That's right."
"And because you hit twenty-one this year, creditors have started to express impatience, no?"
I nodded.
"Think," the banker said thoughtfully, "how would they react if the Count were to expose you as an impostor on the basis of the death certificate he is in possession of?"
"How would they react? Not well!" I snorted, remembering the Chinese moneylender and frowning. "I've sprouted a couple new few gray hairs over this, you know..."
Mr. Levinson leaned back into the seat and spent some time distantly observing the bright yellow fields of alfalfa. On them, there were sharp breaks of wind chasing after waves of dark green.
"If the Banking House buys out your debts," he said a little while later, "let's say, for ten centimes on the franc, how would you think about that?"
"I would think," I laughed uncontrollably, "that you and I do have something to discuss after all!"
5
WHEN WE GOT BACK to town, evening was already coming. We had been en route for some time, but we had been made to wait at a train crossing for the unhurried caterpillar treads of an armored train to crawl past us out toward to the seaside, snarling in all directions with its cannon barrels, mortars and double-barreled AA machine guns.
But as for lost time, I had no regrets, because Mr. Levinson was not only an interesting man to talk to, he was also a skilled financial consultant. Over the course of the trip, my debts, which had been sitting at forty thousand francs, managed to shrink to the utterly laughable sum of four thousand, and even the two thousand the banker asked in commission didn't seem too much, given the ticklish and confusing situation.
By the way, Isaac's main interest was not so much in receiving a one-time pay-off as it was in managing my assets after I inherited the family fund. And I was in no way opposed to that.
"If this is all ok with you," the banker announced near the end of the trip, "I propose we go to the bank and sign all the documents right now. We don't have time to waste after your uncle declares you an impostor."
"I do not object," I answered irresolutely.
The carriage was now rolling through the outskirts of New Babylon, and the driver was looking carefully from side to side, stopping the horses yet again as another dumb pedestrian ran across the carriageway. And at one of the intersections, he suddenly turned off a wide avenue and started the landau circling a dark manufacturing building with a forest of smoking pipes on the roof. After that, the road started descending and soon dove into a tunnel. On its walls, there were chains of electric lights stretching out from one end to the other.
The hoof-beat gave off a long echo inside. Eventually, though, we made it out to a dull spot of light at the exit. There, the landau had a near miss with a heavily-weighed-down cart and turned down an unfamiliar street where the acrid odor of smoke suddenly rolled down my throat and forced me to start coughing.
The banker covered the bottom of his face with a perfumed handkerchief in good time, then warned:
"The air will be getting cleaner soon."
And in fact, the gray behemoth warehouses were left behind us very quickly, and manors extended down along the roadside, as well as homes that had been split into offices. The asphalt pavement came to an end. The landau began shaking again on the uneven cobblestone causeway, and then the carriage entered the Judean Quarter and the driver stopped the horses directly opposite the bank. A watchman ran up from the porch, and hurried to fling open the gate. I was first to get out onto the sidewalk. There, I waited for Isaac Levinson and followed him into the manor.
The banker took a key ring from a homely gentleman of thirty years with a crimson birth mark on half of his left cheek and turned to me.
"We never stop working, Viscount!" he told me with pride. "You will never be left to face your problems alone."
"Except on Saturday," I chuckled.
"Except on Saturday," Mr. Levinson confirmed. "Every other day, we're at your service." And he pointed at the man who had handed him the keys: "In my absence, important clients are received by Aaron Malk."
The plain man gave me a slight bow.
"Nice to meet you," I smiled in reply.
"Leopold, you'll come to see the value of working with us soon!" Mr. Levinson assured me, leading me to the second floor.
The banker's office was furnished so neutrally, that there was no interior detail that even gave away his nationality. It was just a regular old office.
"Don't worry. Filling out the papers won't take long. I took pains to order them filled out in advance," Isaac warned, stopping in the doorway and asking: "Wine, fruit?"
"Thank you, I don't need anything," I refused, took a seat in the guest chair and took the newspaper lying on the coffee table.
The editorial was, as I could have expected, devoted to yet another incident in the Sea of Judea. On the second page, some professor from the medical academy was expanding on a heart problem the heir to the throne was suffering from. And just after I turned the next page, the banker had returned with the papers.
He placed the weighty stack on the table and started looking into them, searching for inaccuracies.
"To be honest," I chuckled, "I never imagined my uncle would dig in so deeply over just twenty thousand francs of yearly income. For him, that must be so little..."
"You shouldn't say that" he shook his head, continuing to play solitaire with the contracts, instructions and declarations before him. "Count Kósice, like many other well-to-do dilettantes, has an inflated opinion of his own analytical abilities. Sharp changes in stock exchange quotation fairly frequently catch such individuals, I beg your forgiveness, with their pants down."
"So he's bankrupt?"
"I suppose that this twenty thousand in yearly income has long been part of his future income calculations," the banker decided, tearing himself from the papers and asking: "Would you like to see the inventory of the property we have been storing on your grandmother’s behalf?"
"What's the point?" I sighed. I then practically jumped out of my chair, as I felt the whole building shake from basement to ceiling in a serious explosion.
The windows sputtered with shards. Paintings started swinging on the wall, and the clock fell over, shattering completely into pieces.
Somehow, I got out of the armchair and, on shaky legs, limped over to the window. I brushed the shards of glass from the wide window-sill, bent over, stepped out and looked at the street. I saw a man in a gas mask, armored cuirass, and a steel army helmet climbing out a hole in the wall. He flew headlong at an armored car on the street, then the building shook again in an even more powerful explosion, and wisps of orange flame began pouring out of the hole in the wall.
What the devil?!
What is happening? Do these robbers really plan to clear out the bank in the middle of the day?
As it turned out, no. The bomber didn't return to the hole in the wall; instead, he pulled a hand-held Madsen machine gun from the open door of the armored car, ran around the self-propelled carriage and laid it out on the sett street.
A long trill broke through the rin
ging in my ears; a moment later, two constables jumped out of the next alley over and a police carriage turned out behind them. And, as dryly as ever, his rapid fire kept sputtering away. Horses, retreating in a long line, were clogging up the causeway. The constables, caught unawares, threw themselves every which way. One hid behind a corner, while another stayed lying on the blood-soaked causeway.
From the other side, a police armored car rolled out onto the intersection; a think slash in one of its portholes glimmered with two sparks, but just then, another bandit appeared from who-knows-where with a hand-held mortar. A shot rumbled out with a boom. The explosion of the grenade ripped the armor sheet from the windshield, and the smoke-enshrouded self-propelled carriage drove off the street into the corner of the house opposite.
The mortarist strained to plunk down the lever again, turning the drum of the awkward weapon, and shot it a second time, but this time not at the armored car, but at the glass window of the barber shop. The grenade broke through it and tore inside. A mess of glass was spit out onto the street; a glass-riddled armchair bounced out.
I took my Roth-Steyr from its holster, popped in a bullet, and tried to aim, but my arms were beginning to tremble in anxiety. Just to be sure, I had to clench the grip with both hands, and even then, the recoil moved the barrel too much. My first shot missed its target.
The mortarist turned and threw up his head in confusion. I took advantage of the moment and plunged my finger down on the trigger again. The bullet pinged off the man's army helmet. The bandit just shook, then raised his hand mortar and aimed it at my window. In a panic, I opened fire in a disorganized fashion, unloading practically my whole magazine before one of the shots hit him in the shoulder, which was not protected by his armored cuirass.
The robber's shot-through arm couldn't hold his weapon, and its barrel fell to the earth, but the wounded bird himself suddenly darted off toward the wall. As soon as I stepped back in the window, with a roar, the back side of the armored car was facing me, revealing a six-barreled Gatling gun. Sparks flew from the contact points on my electric jar. The barrels began spinning and I climbed down from the window sill to the floor without slowing down.
"Get down! Quickly!" I shouted to Isaac Levinson, covering my head with my hands. Meanwhile, Isaac had just come to his senses and was shaking his head cluelessly, standing in the middle of the room.
The banker ducked under the table just as a taught lash of lead whipped against the windows. The high-caliber bullets instantly took what was left of the glass out of the frames and went straight through the wooden ceilings. The durable stone walls, though, were a harder nut to crack. We didn't get hit, but wood splinters and chips of white paint were falling on our heads.
After unloading my Roth-Steyr, I got the backup magazine out of my pocket, stuck it up to the lower edge of the ejection port, and pressed the rounds in with my thumb in a well-practiced motion, driving them into the pistol. I pulled out an emptied hunk of metal, and the bolt went back into place all on its own.
"Leopold!" Levinson suddenly shouted out to me, looking out from under the table. "Fire!" he pointed at the door, which had flames lapping up from behind it.
Ducking down as not to get caught by a stray ricochet, I crossed the office, grabbed the copper door handle and threw back my palm with a curse. My glove had protected my fingers from a burn, but the metal had heated up to a degree that seemed excessive.
What was happening?!
Deftly, I flung open the door and involuntarily covered my face from the fire that was smoking up into it. The whole corridor was in the embrace of the smoking flames, but neither fire nor black smoke could impede my view of the figure standing at the stairwell in a long dress with a shiny coating of aluminum foil, a steel helmet and a gas mask with glass eye slots.
When I appeared, the arsonist lifted the nose-piece of his backpack flamethrower and a stream of liquid flame rolled out of it down the corridor. I managed to slam the office door shut before it came inside, though.
The fire outside roared up and fell silent; then I threw the pistol and took a few shots in a row through the thick oak paneling, not so much in hopes of hitting the man as hoping to stop him from coming any closer and burning us alive.
"What's out there?!" Isaac screamed in fear after the shooting had quieted down. "Who were you shooting at?"
Ignoring his outburst, I cracked the door slightly and peeked out into the corridor; the fire on the other side was so fierce that I had to take an immediate step back.
The flames flared up very quickly. Any delay threatened a torturous, fiery death, but could we really jump out of the window with the bandits still firing on it?!
Could we run out into the corridor and make it down the stairs? What about the flame-thrower?
I turned around toward the banker and asked him:
"Is there any exit from here other than the stairs?"
"Wouldn't it be easier..."
"No, devil! It wouldn't!"
"The back door is at the far end of the corridor," Isaac hinted. Not able to hold back any longer, he burst out to a scream again: "What is happening, Viscount?!"
I could hear unconcealed fear in his voice. I too felt gob-smacked by sheer terror. I wanted to just cower under the table and close my eyes as tightly as possible. Instead, I walked up to the banker and shook him by the shoulder.
"Calm down!" I bellowed at his reddened face. "Have you got any soda water?"
"Soda water?" Isaac was taken aback, but immediately got himself together and ran up to the bar. "Yes!"
"Bring it to me! Quickly!"
The banker flung open the little cabinet, filled to the brim with all kinds of bottles and got a bubbly soda fountain hose out from it. I then ripped the curtain down from one of the windows and threw it on the floor.
"Pour it here!" I commanded the banker. I then ripped down a second one and hurried him along: "Faster! Soak them both!"
Streams of gasified water slopped out onto the firm fabric, and when the soda fountain ran dry, we wrapped ourselves from head to toe and walked up to the door.
"No need to turn at all!" Isaac warned. "The back door to the stairs is straight down the corridor."
"Keys?" I outstretched my arm.
"That door is never locked. We only lock the entrance!"
"Then follow me!" I commanded, first to jump out into the hallway.
At once, it became unbearably warm and stuffy. Air came into my lungs like superheated sand. Flames lapped at my legs. It felt like I'd just woken up in a forge. I had to walk blind, feeling for the walls and Mr. Levinson, but without the wet curtains, the fierce flames would have been searing out my eyes and burning through my skin to the bone.
After running into an unexpected obstacle, I first froze in horror, then remembered, flung open the door and burst out onto the top stair of the back door; Isaac Levinson came out after me, ripped the smoking fabric off himself and plopped down on his knees in a heart-rending coughing fit. And though we had left the fire on the other side of the door, wisps of smoke were already starting to creep in, and there was simply no air to breathe.
With the handle of my pistol, I bashed in a very thin window; we got up close to it, breathed in deeply and the banker pulled me down the stairs.
"This way!"
But there was such a fierce fire spreading from the first floor that it immediately became clear to me that monkeying around down there was equivalent to suicide.
"Let's jump for it!" I commanded and flung open the glass-shard filled window frame.
"We'll have a nasty fall!" Isaac grew alarmed.
I didn't listen though, climbed up onto the window sill and looked down. The ceilings in this building were, in fact, raised, but the risk of breaking my legs was somewhat less frightening than the perspective of being burned alive.
I announced as much to him, grabbed onto the sloped roof and hung out the window. And as soon as I unclenched my fingers, the ground quickly and sharply struck
the soles of my shoes. Building walls, a fence and a wisp of sky were spinning before my eyes. I was sprawled out on the gravel, but immediately grabbed my pistol.
There was no one there.
"Jump!" I then shouted at my brother-in-misfortune and ran up to the back door. From behind it, I could hear muted screams for help.
Isaac climbed out the window, hung off the roof and fell downward with a thump. I kicked the door in with all my might, but didn't find success. I pulled it as hard as I could toward me, but again without result.
"Viscount, the keys!"
Levinson threw me a keyring. I caught it in the air, found the right key and unlocked the door. Together with the wisps of acrid smoke, Aaron Malk, who had been scratching away at the other side, burst in. I had to push him aside, clearing the way.
"Take care of him!" I shouted to the banker, then took several heavy sighs, ventilating my lungs. But before I had stepped into the burning building, the hiss of the backpack flamethrower came back and covered up the cries of the people calling for help. My face buried in my arm, I slipped around the corner, and noticed the silver reflections of a sewn-on aluminum foil coat through the sheet of flame that enshrouded the vestibule.
The arsonist was already rushing for the exit, but I still pulled my Roth-Steyr and sent a couple bullets out after him. They struck one of the gas tanks on his back, and the man was swallowed up in a large burst of flame. Me though, the air blast threw into the air and simply tossed outside...
I AWOKE FROM A SCATHING SLAP. The banker and his assistant had dragged me away from the burning bank, leaned me up against a fence and brought me to my senses with the only means available to them at the time.
My head was ringing very badly.
"Oh devil..." I muttered, massaging my temples with my palms.
"Are you doing alright?" Levinson leaned in over me.
I mumbled back a "yes," and the banker ordered:
"Aaron, gather our employees."
Malk ran off for help and I stood up, limped over to my fallen Roth-Steyr and placed the pistol into its holster. After that, I wiped the soot from my glasses, turned to the banker and sat next to him. The fire had reached the roof. Some of the tiles were already falling in, and though the fire-fighters arrived not long after, dragging their fire hose behind themselves, they weren't so much trying to put out the flames as they were trying to stop them from reaching neighboring buildings. It was a blessing that it wasn't a windy day.