The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  ‘You know what? Let’s leave. Damn the dinner. Let them talk, I don’t care.’

  If Fandorin hesitated, then it was only for an instant. His eyes flashed with a metallic glint and his voice sounded stifled.

  ‘Why not, let’s go.’

  On the way to Ostozhenka Street he behaved very oddly. He didn’t squeeze her arm or try to kiss her or even make conversation.

  Glyceria Romanovna remained silent too, trying to work out the best way to behave with this strange man.

  And why was he so tense? With his lips clenched firmly together and his eyes fixed on the driver.

  Oh, these still waters must definitely run deep! She felt a sweet swooning sensation somewhere inside and rebuked herself angrily: Don’t be such a woman, this is not a romantic adventure, you have to save Vasya!

  At the entrance Fandorin behaved even more surprisingly.

  He let the lady go ahead, but didn’t walk in straight away himself; he paused, and then entered very rapidly, almost leaping in.

  He ran up the stairway first, keeping his hand in his coat pocket all the time.

  ‘Maybe he’s gaga,’ Lidina suddenly thought in fright. ‘Cock-a-doodle in the head, as they say nowadays.’

  But it was too late to back out now.

  Fandorin moved her aside and bounded forward. He swung round and pressed his back against the wall of the hallway. He rapidly turned his gaze left, right, upwards.

  A little black pistol had appeared in his hand out of nowhere.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed, seriously frightened.

  The insane investigator asked:

  ‘Well, where is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Your lover. Or superior. I really don’t know yet what your relationship with him is.’

  ‘Who are you talking about?’ Lidina babbled in a panic. ‘I don’t under—’

  ‘The one who set you this assignment,’ Fandorin interrupted impatiently, listening very carefully. ‘The staff captain, your travelling companion. It was him who ordered you to entice me here, wasn’t it? But he’s not in the apartment, I would sense it. Where is he?’

  She threw her hands up to her chest. He knew, he knew everything! But how?’

  ‘Vasya’s not my lover,’ she gabbled, realising through intuition rather than reason that now was the time to tell the truth. ‘He’s my friend, and I really want to help him. Don’t ask me where he is, I won’t tell you. Erast Petrovich, dear man, I want to ask you for clemency.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For clemency! A man committed a foolish error. From your military point of view it might be considered a crime, but it’s nothing more than absentmindedness! Surely absentmindedness ought not to be punished so severely!’

  The man with dark hair wrinkled up his forehead and put the pistol away in his pocket.

  ‘I don’t q-quite understand … Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Why about him, about him! Vasya Rybnikov! Yes, I know, he lost that drawing of yours, but now do you have to destroy a good man? Why, it’s monstrous! The war will be over in a month, or maybe six, and he has to serve hard labour? Or even worse? It’s not human, it’s not Christian, you must agree!’ And this all flooded out so sincerely and soulfully that the tears sprang to her own eyes.

  Even this cold fish Fandorin was touched – he gazed at her in surprise bordering on utter amazement.

  ‘How could you think I was trying to save my lover!’ Glyceria Romanovna declared bitterly, following up quickly on her advantage. ‘If I loved one man, how could I entice another? Yes, at first I intended to enchant you, in order to help Vasya, but … but you really have turned my head. I confess, I even forgot why I wanted to lead you on … You know, I felt a kind of twinge here …’ She set her hand slightly below her bodice in order to emphasise the line of her bust, which was quite lovely enough already.

  Glyceria Romanovna uttered several more phrases in the same vain in a voice muffled with passion, without worrying too much about their plausibility – everyone knew how gullible and susceptible men were to that kind of talk, especially when the prey was so close and so accessible.

  ‘I’m not asking you for anything. And I won’t ask. Let’s forget about everything …’

  She threw her head back and turned it slightly to one side. First, this was her best angle. And secondly, the position made it very convenient to kiss her.

  A second passed, then another, and another.

  But no kiss came.

  Opening her eyes and squinting sideways, Lidina saw that Fandorin was not looking at her, but off to one side. But there was nothing of any interest there, just the telephone apparatus hanging on the wall.

  ‘He lost a drawing? Is that what Rybnikov told you?’ the investigator said thoughtfully. ‘He lied to you, madam. That man is a Japanese spy. If you don’t want to tell me where he is, you do not have to. I shall find out today in any case. G-goodbye.’

  He swung round and walked out of the apartment.

  Glyceria Romanovna’s legs almost buckled under her. A spy? What monstrous suspicion! She had to warn him immediately. It turned out that the danger was even more serious than he thought! And then, Fandorin had said that he would find out today where Vasya was hiding!

  She grabbed the telephone earpiece, but suddenly felt afraid that the investigator might be listening from the stairway. She opened the door – no one there, nothing but rapid footsteps on the stairs.

  She went back in and telephoned.

  ‘Saint-Saëns Boarding House,’ a woman’s voice cooed in the earpiece. She could hear the sounds of a piano playing a jolly polka.

  ‘I need to talk to Vasilii Alexandrovich urgently!’

  ‘He’s not here.’

  ‘Will he be back soon?’

  ‘He doesn’t report to us.’

  What an ill-mannered maid! Lidina stamped her foot in frustration.

  There was only one answer: she must go there and wait for him.

  The doorman gaped at the visitor as if it was some devil with horns on his head who had arrived, not an elegantly dressed, highly respectable lady, and he blocked the entrance with his chest.

  ‘Who do you want?’ he asked suspiciously.

  The same sounds of rollicking music she had heard on the telephone came out through the doorway. In a respectable boarding house, after ten o’clock in the evening?

  Ah yes, today was 26 May, wasn’t it, the end of the school year, Glyceria Romanovna recalled. There must be a graduation party in the boarding house, that was why there were so many carriages in the courtyard – the parents had come. It was hardly surprising that the doorman did not wish to admit an outsider.

  ‘I’m not here for the party,’ Lidina explained to him. ‘I need to wait for Vasilii Alexandrovich. He will probably arrive soon.’

  ‘He’s already come back. Only this isn’t the way to his rooms, you need to go in over there,’ said the doorman, pointing to the small wing.

  ‘Ah, how stupid of me! Naturally, Vasya can’t live with the girl boarders!’

  She ran up the steps with a rustle of silk. She rang the bell hastily and then started knocking as well.

  The windows of the apartment were dark. Not a shadow stirring, not a sound.

  Tired of waiting, Lidina shouted:

  ‘Vasilii Alexandrovich! It’s me! I have something urgent and terribly important to tell you!’

  And the door opened immediately, that very second.

  Rybnikov stood in the doorway, staring silently at his unexpected visitor.

  ‘Why is it dark in your rooms?’ she asked – in a whisper for some reason.

  ‘I think the electrical transformer has burnt out. What’s happened?’

  ‘But you have candles, don’t you?’ she asked, walking in, and immediately, still on the threshold, stumbling over the words in her agitation, she started telling him the bad news: how she had met the official dealing with his case by chance,
at someone’s home, and this man thought Vasilii Alexandrovich was a spy.

  ‘We have to explain to him that the drawing was stolen from you! I’ll be a witness, I’ll tell them about that nasty specimen on the train. You can’t imagine the kind of man Fandorin is. A very serious gentleman, eyes like ice! He should be looking for that swarthy character, not you! Let me explain everything to him myself!’

  Rybnikov listened to her incoherent story without speaking as he lit the candles in the candelabra one after another. In the trembling light Glyceria Romanovna thought his face seemed so tired, unhappy and haunted that she choked on her pity.

  ‘I’ll do anything for you! I won’t leave you!’ Lidina exclaimed, clutching impetuously at his hands.

  He gave a sudden jerk and strange sparks lit up in his eyes, completely transforming his ordinary appearance. His face no longer seemed pitiful to Glyceria Romanovna – oh no! Black and red shadows ran across his face; he looked like Vrubel’s Demon now.

  ‘Oh God, my darling, my darling, I love you …’ Lidina babbled, stunned by the realisation. ‘How could I … You are the dearest thing that I have!’

  She reached out to him with her arms, her face, her entire body, trembling in anticipation of his movement in response.

  But the former staff captain made a sound like a snarl and shrank back.

  ‘Leave,’ he said in a hoarse voice. ‘Leave immediately.’

  Lidina could never remember running out into the street.

  Rybnikov stood there for a while in the entrance hall, absolutely motionless, gazing at the little flames of the candles with his face set in a stiff, lifeless mask.

  Then there was a quiet knock at the door.

  He leapt across in a single bound and wrenched the door open.

  The countess was standing on the porch.

  ‘I’m sorry for bothering you,’ she said, peering into the semi-darkness. ‘It’s noisy in the house tonight, so I came to ask whether our guests are bothering you. I could tell them that a string has broken in the piano and set up the gramophone in the small drawing room. That would be quieter …’

  Sensing something strange in her lodger’s behaviour, Countess Bovada stopped in mid-phrase.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’

  Without speaking, Vasilii Alexandrovich took hold of her hand and pulled her towards him.

  The countess was a hard-headed woman and extremely experienced, but she was bewildered by the suddenness of this.

  ‘Come on,’ said the transformed Rybnikov, jerking her in after him.

  She followed him, smiling mistrustfully.

  But when Vasilii Alexandrovich forced his lips against hers with a dull moan and clasped her in his strong arms, the smile on the plump, beautiful face of the Spanish grandee’s widow changed first to an expression of amazement and, later, to a grimace of passion.

  Half an hour later Beatrice was unrecognisable, weeping on her lover’s shoulder and whispering words that she had not spoken for many years, since her early girlhood.

  ‘If you only knew, if you only knew,’ she kept repeating as she wiped away the tears, but what exactly he ought to know, she was unable to explain.

  Rybnikov barely managed to bundle her out.

  When he was finally left alone, he sat down on the floor in an awkward, complicated pose. He stayed like that for exactly eight minutes. Then he got up, shook himself like a dog and made a telephone call – exactly half an hour before midnight, as arranged.

  And at the same time, at the far side of the boulevard ring, Lidina, who had not yet removed her evening wrap and her hat, was standing in front of the mirror in her hallway, weeping bitterly.

  ‘It’s finished … My life is finished,’ she whispered. ‘Nobody, nobody needs me …’

  She swayed, caught her foot on something that rustled and cried out. The entire floor of the hallway was covered with a living carpet of scarlet roses. If poor Glyceria Romanovna’s nose had not been blocked by her sobbing, she would have caught the intoxicating scent on the stairway.

  From out of the dark depths of the apartment came entrancing sounds, creeping stealthily at first, then flowing in a burgeoning flood. The magical voice sang Count Almaviva’s serenade.

  ‘Ecco, ridente in cielo spunta la bella aurora …’

  The tears gushed out of Glyceria Romanovna’s lovely eyes faster than ever.

  The fourth syllable, in which the name of the Japanese God is taken in vain

  The very moment that Evstratii Pavlovich finished reading the urgent message from the senior member of the squad that had arrived from St Petersburg to replace the agents slain by the metal stars, he jumped up from his desk and dashed to the door – he even forgot about his bowler hat.

  The duty carriages were standing ready at the entrance to the Okhrana building, and the drive from Gnezdnikovsky Lane to Chistoprudnaya Street was about ten minutes, if you drove like the wind.

  ‘Heigh-ho, heigh-ho,’ the court counsellor kept repeating to himself, trying to read the note once again – it was not easy: the carriage was bouncing over the cobbled street, there was not enough light from the street lamps, and Smurov had scrawled the note like a chicken scribbling with its foot. It was quite obvious that the highly experienced agent who had been charged with following Fandorin’s movements was seriously agitated – the letters jumped and skipped, the lines were lopsided.

  I took over the watch at 8 from sen. agent Zhuchenko, at the house of General Charme. Silver Fox emerged from the entranceway at three minutes to 9, accompanied by a little lady who has been given the code name Bimbo. They took a cab to Ostozhenka Street, the Bomze House. Silver Fox emerged at 9.37 and five minutes later Bimbo came running out. I sent two men to follow Silver Fox, Kroshkin and I followed Bimbo – I was quite impressed by how agitated she seemed. She drove to Chistoprudny Boulevard and let her carriage go at the Saint-Saëns Boarding House. She walked up on to the porch of the wing. She knocked and rang the bell, but the door was not opened for a long time. From the position I had taken up, I observed a man peep out of the window, look at her and hide. There is a bright lantern outside the building just there and I got a good look at his face. It seemed familiar to me. After a while I remembered where I had seen it: in Peter, on Nadezhdinskaya Street (code name Kalmyk). And then I realised that his description fitted the Acrobat, as described in the briefing circular. It’s him, Evstratii Pavlovich, I swear it’s him!

  Sen. agent Smurov

  The way the report was written violated the regulations, and the manner of its conclusion was entirely impermissible, but the court counsellor was not annoyed with Smurov about that.

  ‘Well, what’s he up to? Still there?’ Mylnikov snapped at the senior agent as soon as he jumped down from the carriage.

  Smurov was sitting in the bushes, behind the fence of the small park in the square, from where there was an excellent view of the yard of the Saint-Saëns, flooded with the bright light of coloured lanterns.

  ‘Yes, sir. Have no doubt, Evstratii Pavlovich, I’ve got Kroshkin watching round the other side. If the Kalmyk had climbed out of the window, Kroshkin would have whistled.’

  ‘All right, tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘Right, then,’ said Smurov, raising his notebook to his eyes. ‘Bimbo didn’t stay long with Kalmyk, only five minutes. She ran out at 10.38, wiping away her tears with a handkerchief. At 10.42 a woman emerged from the main entrance, we called her Peahen. She walked up on to the porch and went inside. Peahen stayed until 11.20. She emerged sobbing and slightly unsteady on her feet. That’s all there is.’

  ‘What does this slit-eyed fiend get up to, to upset all the women like that?’ asked Mylnikov, astonished. ‘Well, never mind, now we’ll upset him a little bit too. So, Smurov, I’ve brought six men along with me. I’ll leave one with you. You three are on the windows. And I’ll take the others and get the Jap. He’s tricky all right, but we weren’t exactly born yesterday either. And then, it’s dark in t
here. He must have gone to bed. Worn out from all those women.’

  They doubled over and ran across the yard. Before walking up on to the porch, they took off their boots – they didn’t want any clattering now.

  The court counsellor’s men were hand picked. Pure gold, not men. He didn’t have to explain anything to them, gestures were enough.

  He snapped his fingers at Sapliukin, and Sapliukin immediately leaned down over the lock. He fiddled about a bit with his picklock, putting in a drop of oil where it was needed. In less than a minute, the door was opened soundlessly.

  Mylnikov entered the dark hallway first, holding at the ready a most convenient little doodad – a rubber club with a lead core. The Jappo had to be taken alive, so Fandorin wouldn’t cut up nasty afterwards.

  After he clicked a little button on his secret torch, Evstratii Pavlovich picked out three white doors with the beam: one straight ahead, one on the left, one on the right.

  He pointed with his finger: you go straight on, you go this way, you go that way, only shshhhh.

  He stayed in the hallway with Lepinsh and Sapliukin, ready to dash through the door from behind which they heard the agreed signal: the squeaking of a mouse.

  They stood there, huddled up in their tension, waiting.

  A minute went by, then two, and three, and five.

  Vague nocturnal rustlings came from the apartment; somewhere behind the wall a gramophone was wailing. A clock started striking midnight – so loudly and suddenly that Mylnikov’s heart almost jumped out of his chest.

  What were they mucking about at in there? It only took a moment, just glance in and turn your head this way and that. Had they just disappeared into thin air, or what?

  The court counsellor suddenly realised that he wasn’t feeling the thrill of the hunt any longer. And his passionate eagerness had evaporated without a trace – in fact, he felt repulsive, chilly shudders running down his spine. ‘Those damn nerves. I’ll just nab this Jappo, and then I’ll go on the mineral water treatment,’ Evstratii Pavlovich promised himself.