by Boris Akunin
He assumed a combat pose, just as he had done with Suga and – hoorah! – succeeded in parrying the first kick with his elbow. Now, according to the science of jujitsu, he should build on his success by moving on to the attack. Erast Petrovich lunged (in a way more suited to boxing), but missed his opponent, who ducked under the fist and straightened up again like a spring, and then Fandorin’s feet parted company with the pier. The titular counsellor flew, tumbling over and over in the air, and for as long as this flight lasted, he thought of nothing. And he didn’t think at all after he struck his head against the edge of the pier: he saw a flash, heard an extremely unpleasant crunch, and that was all.
But the cold water in which the body of the vanquished vice-consul landed with a loud splash brought him round again. And his first thought (even before he surfaced) was: Why didn’t he kill me? Bullcox must have ordered me to be killed!
Blood was streaming down his face, and there was a ringing sound in his ears, but Erast Petrovich was determined not to lose consciousness. He grabbed hold of a slippery beam, clutched at a transverse pile, hauled himself up and managed to scramble on to the pier.
A second thought forced its way through the noise and the fiery circles in front of his eyes. What about the prince? Had he managed to escape? He had had enough time. And if he had escaped, where could the titular counsellor search for him now?
But there was no need to search for the prince. Erast Petrovich realised that when he saw a dark heap lying under the only street lamp in the distance – as if someone had dumped a pile of old rags there.
Fandorin staggered along the pier with his fingers over his bleeding wound. He wasn’t thinking about the invisible man, because he knew for certain that if the ninja had wanted to kill him, he would have done.
The high-society playboy was lying face down. A glittering steel star had bitten deep into his neck just above the collar. The titular counsellor pulled it out with his finger and thumb, and blood immediately started seeping from the wound. A throwing weapon, the vice-consul guessed, carefully touching the sharpened edges of the small star. And it appeared to be smeared with something.
Once again he was astounded. Why had the invisible man taken the risk of dodging the bullets? All he had to do was fling this thing and it would have been all over.
He leaned down (the sharp movement set everything around him swaying) and turned the dead man over on to his back.
And he saw that Onokoji was still alive.
There was horror dancing in the open eyes and the trembling lips fumbling at the air.
‘Nan jya? Nan jya?,’ the dying man babbled. (‘What happened? What happened?’)
He must not have realised yet what disaster had overtaken him. He had been running for grim death, at full tilt, he couldn’t see anything around him, and suddenly – a blow to the back of his neck …
‘It was a ninja. Bullcox sent him,’ said Fandorin, fighting his dizziness. ‘I’ll take you to a doctor. To Dr Twigs.’
But it was obvious that no doctor could help the prince now, his eyes were already rolling up and back.
Suddenly he wrinkled up his face, gathered all his strength and said, slowly but clearly:
‘Not Bullcox … Don …’
‘What?’
‘Don … Tsurumaki.’
That was all. His jaw shuddered and dropped open. Only the whites of his eyes were visible under his half-open eyelids.
The name throbbed in the titular counsellor’s bruised head, like the rhythm of a tolling bell: Don-Don-Don …
This is how life sounds
Ding-ding, tingaling, cuckoo,
Ending with: dong, dong
A HEADACHE
Fandorin thought he had just lain down on the planking for half an hour to wait for the spell of severe dizziness to pass off, but when he opened his eyes again he discovered that he was in his own bedroom, lying on the bed, completely naked under the blanket, with two heads leaning down over him: both had narrow eyes, but one was round, with hair cut in a short, stiff brush, and the other was long and narrow, with a neat parting. It was Masa and Shirota, both gazing at the titular counsellor with expressions of intense anxiety.
‘What … happened … to me?’ asked Erast Petrovich, struggling to force his dry tongue to pronounce the words.
This simple question provoked an entire discussion in Japanese, after which the two men nodded to each other as if they had come to some arrangement, and the secretary began cautiously:
‘At dawn Miss O-Yumi shook your servant awake and told him: “The master is in trouble, I can feel it, let’s go, quickly”. She ran along the seafront towards the cargo wharfs, with Masahiro following her. He says that as she ran, she kept looking at the moorings. At one of the farthest, already in the native town, she found you lying unconscious, covered in blood.’
Fandorin looked at Masa, who narrowed his eyes conspiratorially. Aha, thought Erast Petrovich, they didn’t tell Shirota there was a dead body lying beside me. That’s good. But how did O-Yumi know that I was in trouble? And how did she guess that she should look for me on the seafront? What an amazing woman. Where is she?
He looked around, but she wasn’t in the room.
‘Miss O-Yumi did something – apparently she pressed on some vein – and the bleeding stopped. Then she tore a strip off her dress and bandaged you up. She ordered your servant to carry you home, but she did not come back here. She said that an in fusion of some mountain plant was needed urgently – Masahiro did not remember the name. She told him that if you did not drink this infusion, the blood in your head would dry up and become a little stone, and after a while his master could die. Your servant carried you as far as the boundary of the Settlement, and there he was fortunate enough to meet an early riksha … And this morning the consul ran into your apartment and saw you lying here unconscious with a bandage on your head. He shouted at your servant, called me and sent for the doctor. I went to Mr Twigs, knowing that he is your friend … And the consul left for Tokyo urgently, to go to the embassy …’
So many things in this story were unclear, but Fandorin was struck most forcibly of all by Vsevolod Vitalievich’s strange behaviour.
‘He came running in?’
The punctilious Doronin bursting into his assistant’s apartment first thing in the morning? Something really extraordinary must have happened for him to do that.
Shirota faltered and did not answer.
‘And what did Dr Twigs say?’
The two Japanese exchanged glances again. And once again there was no answer.
Masa said something in an anxious voice and the secretary translated it.
‘You need to lie down and change your compress every hour and you must not worry. Dr Albertini says you have a very serious concussion.’
‘Why Albertini and n-not Twigs?’
Another animated discussion in Japanese, this time without any translation.
Erast Petrovich’s head really was aching terribly, and he felt nauseous, but all this mystery was beginning to get on his nerves.
Damn the doctors and the consul. There was more important business to deal with.
‘Masa, Asagawa-san koko, hayaku!’1 the titular counsellor ordered.
The servant batted his eyelids and gave Shirota a frightened glance. The secretary cleared his throat in warning.
Erast Petrovich’s heart started pounding, beating faster and faster with every second. He jerked upright on the bed and bit his lip to stop himself crying out from the pain.
‘Masa, I must get dressed!’
Fandorin returned to the consulate after two in the morning, shattered by the scale of the catastrophe. He would probably have been even more shaken if not for the constant dizziness and spasms of pain that repeatedly transfixed his cranium from temple to temple, imparting an air of unreality to everything that happened, as if it were some appalling nightmare. The horror of it all made it too far-fetched to believe. Things like that didn’t happen in wakin
g life.
Inspector Asagawa had been killed by hooligans. And, if the Japanese police could be believed, purely by chance, in a pointless, drunken brawl.
Sergeant Lockston had died of a heart attack in his office.
And an autopsy had shown that a blood vessel had burst in Dr Twigs’ brain.
All of this was already highly unlikely, but a coincidence of chance events was possible, in theory – if not for that invisible man, who had killed the witness, and the disappearance of the three clues.
The coded diagram had disappeared from the doctor’s study. No oaths written in blood had been discovered on the sergeant’s body. And the police knew nothing about any file of reports supposedly in the inspector’s possession.
As soon as Fandorin tried to fathom the meaning of this monstrous sequence of events, his dizziness intensified and he was swamped by a wave of nausea. And he simply didn’t have the strength to digest and extrapolate on the ‘Don Tsurumaki’ clue.
But the vice-consul was tormented most of all by O-Yumi’s disappearance. Where was she? Would she come back? What was this damned business about a mountain herb?
Gibberish. Insane, crazy gibberish.
Just as Fandorin was approaching the consulate, a two-seater kuruma drove up from the direction of Main Street, and out got Doronin, with the navy agent Bukhartsev (what the hell was he doing here?). They spotted the vice-consul walking towards them and stared at him dourly.
‘Here he is, the hero,’ the lieutenant captain said loudly to Vsevolod Vitalievich. ‘You told me he was almost at death’s door, but now see how chirpy he looks. If I’d only known, I wouldn’t have come, I’d have ordered him to report to Tokyo.’
This beginning boded nothing good, but then, how could there possibly be anything good in all this?
Doronin looked hard into his assistant’s face, which was as white as if it had been dusted with chalk.
‘How are you feeling? Why did you get up?’
‘Thank you, I am p-perfectly all right.’
Fandorin shook hands with the consul, but merely exchanged hostile glances with Bukhartsev, who demonstratively hid his hands behind his back. Well, at the end of the day, they worked in different departments, and they were both on the ninth level of the table of ranks, so no insubordination was involved.
But rank was one thing, and position was quite another, and the sailor immediately demonstrated who was in charge here.
In the consul’s office, he occupied the incumbent’s place at the desk, without bothering to ask permission. Vsevolod Vitalievich had to take a seat on another chair and Fandorin remained standing – not out of diffidence, but because he was afraid that if he sat down, he would not be able to get up again. He leaned against the wall and crossed his arms.
‘Secretary! Hey, whatever your name is …’ the lieutenant captain yelled through the open door. ‘Stay close, you might be needed!’
‘Yes, sir,’ said a voice in the corridor.
Doronin frowned vaguely but said nothing. And Fandorin realised that Bukhartsev had said that to intensify the menace of the situation, as if some rigorous trial were about to begin here and now, and sentence would be pronounced, and it would need to be dictated.
‘His Excellency and I have not been able to get anything intelligible out of your superior,’ Bukhartsev said in an aggressively assertive tone, fixing Erast Petrovich with a gimlet-eyed stare. ‘Vsevolod Vitalievich merely keeps repeating that he bears responsibility for everything, but he can’t explain anything in a way that makes sense. So I have been instructed to conduct an inquiry. You, Fandorin, are to consider yourself answerable to the ambassador in my person. Indeed, even more than that, answerable to the state of Russia.’
The titular counsellor paused slightly before making a slight bow. So be it, to the state.
‘Well then, the first matter,’ the lieutenant captain continued in the style of a public prosecutor. ‘The Japanese police of Yokohama have discovered the body of Prince Onokoji, a member of the very highest levels of society and relative of many influential individuals, near some warehouses.’
‘Near some warehouses?’ Erast Petrovich thought in surprise, and then recalled his servant’s conspiratorial grimace. So, before he carried his unconscious master away from the pier, he had had the wits to move the body somewhere else. Well done, Masa.
‘On examination of the papers of the head of the foreign police, following his sudden death, it emerged that the aforementioned Prince Onokoji had been kept under arrest in the municipal jail.’ Bukhartsev raised his voice, emphasising every single word now. ‘And he had been confined there at the insistence of the Russian vice-consul! What does this mean, Fandorin? Why this arbitrary arrest, and of such an important individual? The whole truth, with no dissimulation! That is the only thing that can mitigate in any way the punishment that awaits you!’
‘I am not afraid of punishment,’ Erast Petrovich said coolly. ‘I will expound the facts as I know them, by all means. Although I must state in advance that I acted entirely at my own discretion and risk, without informing the c-consul.’
The agent snorted incredulously, but he didn’t interrupt. With all possible brevity, but also without omitting anything of substance, the titular counsellor recited the entire sequence of events, explained the reasons for his actions and concluded with a recital of the terrible outcome to which these actions had led. He did not attempt to justify his own mistakes, he made no excuses. And the only concession he made to his own vanity was to omit the false trail leading from the intendant to Bullcox. Consul Doronin had also not mentioned the Right Honourable, although he was well aware of the ‘British intrigue’ theory.
‘Your servant is smarter than you are,’ the naval agent remarked acidly after listening to the whole story. ‘He realised he had to drag the prince’s body as far away as possible, otherwise, who knows, the Japanese police might have suspected the Russian vice-consul of murder. To hear you talk, Fandorin, anyone might think you were a genuine patriot of your Fatherland, a heroic partisan, a real Denis Davydov. Only why have you omitted to mention the escapade with Bullcox?’
He knows, Fandorin realised. But it makes no difference now.
‘Yes, that was my mistake. I allowed myself to be deceived. You see …’
He was going to tell Bukhartsev about the intendant’s lie just before he died, but the lieutenant captain interrupted him.
‘A “mistake”, “deceived”. You stupid boy! Creating an incident like that! And all because of a skirt – that is, a kimono! A challenge to a duel from Bullcox – a senior governmental adviser! What a nightmare! A diplomatic scandal!’
At this point the titular counsellor stopped understanding absolutely anything at all – he clutched at the stabbing pain in his temple.
‘What ch-challenge? What do you mean?’
‘Mstislav Nikolaevich is referring to the challenge that was delivered from Bullcox at eight o’clock this morning,’ Doronin explained. ‘In view of the fact that you were unconscious, I was obliged to accept it. The document is drawn up in due form, the choice of weapons is yours and there is just one condition: only one of the opponents shall remain alive. No sooner had Bullcox’s second left than some men arrived from the native police – concerning Prince Onokoji … I was obliged to set out immediately for Tokyo, in order to inform His Excellency.’
Fandorin smiled dourly – here was further confirmation that Bullcox was no conspirator, no master villain lurking in the wings who sent assassins to do his bidding, but an English gentleman, willing to respond to an insult by offering up his breast to the bullet or the sword.
‘And still he smiles!’ Bukhartsev exclaimed furiously. ‘He has disgraced the title of a Russian diplomat and he laughs! And for whom? For some flesh-peddling …’
‘Hold your tongue!’ Fandorin shouted at the lieutenant captain. ‘One more word, and you and I will fight a duel to the death!’
‘Why, he shouldn’t be dismissed the
service, he should be put in a madhouse, in a straitjacket!’ Mstislav Nikolaevich muttered, but without his former hauteur. He obviously did not wish to fight any duel to the death.
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ the consul intervened. ‘We have common cause here, we need to find a way out of an extremely unpleasant situation. Let us not quarrel! Erast Petrovich, you said that before he died the prince named Don Tsurumaki as the leader of the conspiracy?’
‘Yes. But why would an entrepreneur, philanthropist and advocate of progress kill the minister? It doesn’t make any sense …’
It should, perhaps, be noted that at that particular moment the titular counsellor’s head was incapable of making sense of anything much at all, the pain was kneading and squeezing it so fiercely.
‘Oh, doesn’t it?’ Vsevolod Vitalievich said slowly, rubbing his chin, ‘Why not? … It’s actually quite logical. Tsurumaki is a constitutionalist, an advocate of parliamentarianism, which opens up unlimited opportunities for a man like him. Okubo was a classic devotee of enlightened absolutism. From the point of view of our Mr Cloud, the minister was an obstacle on the road to social and economic progress – since you have already brought up the subject of progress. There was nothing personal about it. It’s just that the “New Japanese” like our mutual friend have got used to solving their problems in the simplest and most effective way. What could possibly be more effective: remove one piece from the board, and the game is won … And Tsurumaki has more than enough technical means. Firstly, he has retained his own force of guards from the civil war – the so-called Black Jackets, who serve him with fierce devotion.’ (Fandorin recalled the invisible servants in the estate at the Bluff.) ‘Secondly, the Don effectively owns the entire shadow economy of Yokohama, with all its low dives and dens of fornication. And that means he has close ties with the criminal world, the Yakuza.’ (Yes, yes: the Rakuen, the hunchback, Erast Petrovich thought.) ‘And finally, ever since that same revolution, the Don has remained in close contact with the Satsuma samurai, who fought with him against the Shogun.’