by Boris Akunin
We hurried across the empty space and ran down the slope. Fandorin was bending over, examining the door in the gates. A tousle-headed young man was sitting beside him with his back to the wall and his eyes rolled up, opening and closing his mouth like a fish that has been lifted out of the water.
‘A cunning d-door,’ Erast Petrovich said apprehensively. ‘You see that wire? It’s just like in a good shop – when you walk in, the bell rings. But we are modest unassuming individuals, arewe not? We’ll just cut the wire with a knife, like so. Why distract people from their conversation? Especially since it appears that Mr Stump has already arrived or, as they like to say in this beau monde, “rolled up”.’
I could not understandwhy Fandorinwas so very cheerful. My teethwere chattering in excitement (I hope that itwas excitement and not fear), but he was almost rubbing his hands in glee and in general behaving as if we were engaged in some enjoyable, if not entirely decent, form of recreation. I recalled that Endlung had behaved in the same way before he took Pavel Georgievich to some disreputable spot. I have heard that there are people for whom danger is what wine is to a drunkard or opium to the hopeless addict. Evidently the former state counsellor belonged to this class of people. In any case, that would explain a lot about the way he behaved and the things that he did.
Fandorin pushed the door gently, and it opened without a squeak – the hinges must have been well oiled.
I saw a sloping floor illuminated by the crimson reflections of flames. Somewhere down below there was a fire or torches were burning.
We walked down a rather narrow passage for about twenty steps and then Fandorin, who was at the front, flung out his hand. We heard voices echoing hollowly under stone vaults. My eyes grew slightly accustomed to the gloom, and I saw that the passage was formed by two rows of old oak barrels that were half-rotten from age and the damp air.
Erast Petrovich suddenly crouched over and slipped into a gap between the barrels. We followed him.
It turned out that the hugewooden containerswere not standing right up against each other, and the gaps between them formed a kind of a maze. We crept soundlessly along this winding path, maintaining our direction from the flickers of light on the ceiling and the sound of voices that became ever more audible, so that I could already make out individual words, although I did not always understand their meaning.
‘. . . Tomorrow I’ll drill a hole in your bonce if you yap. When I whistle, that’s when you can start crowing.’
Erast Petrovich turned into a narrow opening and stopped moving. Peeping over his shoulder I saw a bizarre and sinister scene.
There was a planking table standing in the middle of a rather wide space, surrounded on all sides by rows of dark barrels. Standing around itwere several iron tripods with burning torches thrust into them. The flames fluttered and crackled and thin plumes of black smoke rose up to the vaulted ceiling.
There were six men sitting at the table, one at the head and five along the other three sides. I could make out the leader better than the others because he was facing in our direction. I saw a coarse, powerful face with a prominent forehead, sharp folds alongside the mouth and a lower jaw that broadened towards the bottom, but it was not the face that caught my attention, itwas the leader’s right arm, lying on the table. Instead of a hand it had a three-pronged fork!
Stump – for there could be be no doubt it was he – thrust his incredible hand into a dish standing in front of him, pulled out a piece of meat and dispatched it into his mouth.
‘No one’s doing no crowing,’ said one of the men siting with his back to us. ‘Are we dumb clucks or what? But at least give us something to be getting on with. What’s the deal? What are we dossing about like this for? I’ve done enough polishing the seat of my pants. Don’t drink any wine, don’t deal any cards. We’re bored to death.’
The others began fidgeting and muttering, demonstrating their clear agreement with the speaker.
Stump carried on chewing unhurriedly, looking at them with his deep-set eyes drowned in the shadows under his heavy brow– I could only see the sparks glittering in them. He allowed his comrades to make their din for a while, then suddenly swung his hand and struck the dish hard with his fork. There was a crack, and the stout clay vessel split in two. Immediately it all went quiet.
‘I’ll give you wine and cards,’ the leader drawled in a low, quiet voice and spat out his half-chewed scrap of meat to one side. ‘The deal here is the once-in-a-lifetime kind, and not in every life either. A big man has put his trust in us. And if any louse here messes it up for me, I’ll hook his chitterlings out with this here fork and make him eat them.’
He paused, and from the motionless figures of the bandits I realised that the threat he had just made was no mere figure of speech but a perfectly literal promise. I felt the goose pimples rising all over my body.
‘No need to frighten us, Stump,’ said the same bandit, obviously the most reckless desperado in the gang. ‘You lay it out straight and clear. Why treat us like lousy mongrels? We’ve hung around on look-out a couple of times and tailed a couple of gulls. What kind of deal is that? We’re wolves, not miserable dogs.’
‘That’s for me to know,’ the head bandit snapped. ‘And you’ll chirp the way I tell you to.’ He leaned forward. ‘This shindy’s the kind it’s best for you not to know about, Axe, you’ll sleep better for it. And what they called us in for is still to come. We’ll show what we can do. And I tell you what, brothers. Once the job’s done, we’ll cut and run.’
‘Out of Khitrovka?’ someone asked. ‘Or out of town?’
‘Eejit! Out of Roossia!’ Stump snapped impressively.
‘What d’you mean, out of Roossia?’ objected the one he had called Axe. ‘Where are we gonna live? Turkishland, is it? I don’t speak their lingo.’
Stump grinned, baring a mouthful of jagged, chipped teeth.
‘That’s all right. Axe, with the loot you’ll have, the Muslims’ll start chatting your lingo. Believe me, brothers, Stump doesn’t make idle talk. We’ll all get so well greased up from this job, every one of you will stay greased all the way to the grave.’
‘But won’t this big man of yours spin us off?’ the same sceptic asked doubtfully.
‘He’s not that kind. The most honest top man in the whole wide world. Compared to him our King is a louse.’
‘What sort of man is he then? A real eagle, I suppose?’
I noticed that Fandorin tensed up as he waited for the bandit boss’s answer.
Stump clearly found the question rather embarrassing. He picked his teeth with his fork as if he was wondering whether to say anything or not. But eventually he decided to answer.
‘I won’t try to bamboozle you. I don’t know. He’s the kind of man who’s not that easy to get close to. His toffs rolled up with him – real eagles they are, you’re no match for them . . . This man doesn’t speak our lingo. I’ve seen him once. In a basement like ours, only smaller and with no light. I tell you, he’s a serious man and what he says, he means. He sat there in the dark, so I couldn’t see his face. Whispered to his interpreter, and he told me everything in our lingo. Our King likes to bawl and shout, but this here is Europe. You can hear a whisper better than a shout.’
Even though this remark came from the lips of an out-andout criminal, I was struck by its psychological precision. It really is true that the less a person raises his voice, the more he is listened to and the better he is heard. The late sovereign never shouted at anyone. And the procurator of the Holy Synod, the all-powerful Konstantin Petrovich, speaks in a quiet murmur too. Why, take even Fandorin – so very quiet, but when he starts to speak, the members of the royal family hang on every word.
‘Oh-ho, that’s mighty. And where was your meet with this man?’
Fandorin half-rose to his feet, and I held my breath. Would he really say?
At that very moment therewas a deafening crash that rumbled and echoed through the stone vaults of the basement and
crumbs of stone fell from the ceiling onto the table.
‘Don’t move, you blackguards,’ said a deafening voice, amplified many times over by a speaking trumpet. ‘This is Colonel Karnovich. You are all in our sights. The next bullet is for anyone who even twitches.’
‘Mmmmm,’ I heard Fandorin groan in a pained voice.
The colonel really had made his appearance at a very bad moment, but on the other hand the arrest of the entire gang, especially of Stump himself, was surely bound to open some door leading to Doctor Lind. Why, good for Karnovich. How cunningly he had pretended that the information he received from me was of no interest!
The bandits all turned round, but I had no chance to get a good look at them because Stump shouted: ‘Douse the lights!’ and the robbers all scattered, overturning the tripods as they went.
The cellar went dark, but not for very long at all. A second later, long vicious streaks of fire started hurtling through the air from all sides, and the din that ensued was so loud that I was deafened.
Fandorin pulled on my arm, andwe both tumbled to the floor.
‘Lie still, Ziukin!’ he shouted. ‘There’s nothing to be done now.’
It seemed to me that the firing went on for a long time, occasionally punctuated by howls of pain and Karnovich’s commands.
‘Korneev, where are you? Take your lads to the right! Miller, ten men to the left! Torches, get those torches here!’
Soon rays of light started probing the basement – running over the barrels, the overturned table, two motionless bodies on the floor. The shooting had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
‘Come out with your hands up!’ Karnovich shouted. ‘You’ve got nowhere to go anyway. The building is surrounded. Stump first!’
‘That’s for you from Stump!’
A tongue of flame spurted out from the far corner and the rays of light instantly darted to that spot. I saw an overturned barrel and above it the silhouette of a head and shoulders.
‘They’ll kill him, the b-blockheads,’ Fandorin hissed in fury.
There was a deafening salvo, and chips of wood went flying off the barrel in all directions, then again and again. No one fired back from the corner any longer.
‘We surrender!’ someone shouted out of the darkness. ‘Don’t fire, chief.’
One at a time, three men came out into the open, holding their hands up high. Two of them could barely stay on their feet. Stump was not among them.
Erast Petrovich stood up and walked out of our hiding place. Masa and I followed him.
‘Good evening,’ Karnovich greeted Fandorin ironically. The colonel was completely surrounded by stalwart young men in civilian dress. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’
Without even glancing at the head of the court police, Fandorin walked across to the overturned barrel from behind which a lifeless arm could be seen projecting. He squatted down on his haunches and then immediately got up again.
A large number of men appeared out of nowhere on every side. Some put handcuffs on the bandits who had surrendered, some darted around between the barrels and for some reason some even felt the floor with their hands. The rays of electric light, dozens of them, glided over everything. There was a harsh smell of gunpowder and smoke. For some reason I glanced at my watch. It was seven minutes to twelve, which meant that only sixteen minutes had elapsed sincewe entered the basement.
‘You have ruined everything, Karnovich,’ said Fandorin, halting in front of the colonel. ‘Stump is riddled with bullets, and he was the only one who knew where to find Lind. Where the devil did you spring from, damn you? Have you been spying on me?’
Karnovich looked somewhat embarrassed. He squinted sideways at me and gave no answer, but Fandorin understood anyway.
‘You, Ziukin?’ he said quietly, looking at me, and shook his head. ‘How stupid . . .’
‘Kare da!’ squealed Mr Masa, who was standing some distance away from me. ‘Uragirimono!’
As if it were a dream, I saw him gather speed as he came running towards me, jump high in the air and thrust one foot out in front of him. My vision was obviously working much more rapidly than my thoughts, because I managed to get a very good look at the Japanese shoe (small, made of yellow leather, with a patched sole) as it approached my forehead.
And that was the end of 10 May for me.
1 My God! Mr Ziukin, what has happened? And who are these men? Is this the Japanese servant?
2 appart from that.
3 I will try my best.
4 Immediately.
5 Let me go, let me go.
11 May
Saturday did not exist for me because I spent a night, a day and another night lying in a dead faint.
12 May
I came to instantly, without any preliminary wandering between oblivion and wakefulness, that is, not at all as if I were emerging from ordinary sleep. One moment I was seeing the basement illuminated by those creeping beams of light and the rapidly approaching yellow shoe, then I closed my eyes, and when I opened them I was in a completely different place: daylight, a white ceiling and at one side, at the limit of my vision, two faces – Mademoiselle Declique and Mr Fandorin. At first for a moment I did not think this fact of any great importance. I simply noted that they were sitting there, looking down at me, and I was lying in bed. And then I began feeling the strange numbness in all my body, heard the regular murmur of rain outside the window and started. Why were their shoulders touching like that?
‘Grace à Dieu!’ said Mademoiselle. ‘Il a repris connaissance. Vous aviez raison.’1
I looked from her to Fandorin with a feeling that there was something that I ought to ask him.
‘What is uragirimono?’ I then asked, repeating the resounding word that had stuck in my memory. In fact, I thought that I had only just heard it.
‘It means t-traitor in Japanese,’ Erast Petrovich replied coolly, leaning over me and for some reason pulling down my lower eyelids with his fingers (I was simply mortified at such familiarity). ‘I am glad that you are alive, Ziukin. After a blow like that you might never have recovered consciousness. You have a very thick skull – there is not even any concussion. You have been lying unconscious for almost forty hours. Try to sit up.’
Sitting up without any especial effort, I suddenly felt embarrassed because I saw that I was wearing only my undershirt, and it was unbuttoned over my chest. Noticing my unease, Mademoiselle delicately averted her eyes.
Fandorin handedmea glass ofwater and in the same measured tone of voice told me something that brought me back to reality: ‘You, Ziukin, have done serious damage to our cause by telling Karnovich about our plans. A highly promising lead has been lost. Stump has been killed. Four of his gang, including the sentry whom I stunned, have been taken alive, but they are quite useless to us. Onewas used for snooping around the Hermitage. Another was the driver in the carriage that you attempted to chase. He was the one who lashed you with his whip, remember? But he does not know who was sitting in the carriage – he did not even hear the child cry out. Stump ordered him to get up on the coach box on Nikolo-Yamskaya Street, drive along a set route, and then get back down again at the Andronnikov Monastery. There he gave up his seat to a different driver, who did not look Russian. And that is all. Stump, at least, knew where L-Lind’s lair is. But now we have been left empty-handed. So Masa’s anger is understandable. Now that it is clear you are alive and almost well, my assistant will finally be released from custody, and a good thing too – without him I am like a man without arms.’
I touched my forehead and felt a substantial bump. Well, serve me right.
‘But are there no leads at all then?’ I asked, my voice trembling with awareness of the gravity of my mistake.
‘Now all we can do is put our trust in Mademoiselle Declique. I am afraid I have run out of ideas. My Lady, tell Afanasii Stepanovich about your journeys to Lind’s place yesterday and today.’
‘What, have you already been to see him twice?’ I aske
d in amazement and turned towards the grey window, wondering what time it was.
‘Yes, today’s meeting was early this morning,’ Mademoiselle replied. ‘Will you permit me to speak French? It will be much quicker.’
And indeed, in five minutes she gave me an account of the events that had occurred during my enforced absence.
The previous day, Saturday, she had once again been summoned from the church by a note. The carriage (not the same one as the day before, but verymuch like it and also with boarded-up windows) was waiting on the next side street. The driver was the same – bearded, unspeaking, with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. Fifty-four minutes later (on this occasion Fandorin had given Mademoiselle a watch with phosphorescent hands) she was once again blindfolded and soon found herself in the same underground vault. This time they uncovered her eyes for a few moments so that she could take a brief glance at Mikhail Georgievich. The boy was lying with his eyes closed, but he was alive. The governess was forbidden to look around and all she saw was a bare stone wall dimly lit by a candle, and a chest that served His Highness as a bed.
On the morning of that day the whole procedure had been repeated. Doctor Lind had acquired an aigrette of diamonds and sapphires. During the few seconds that Mademoiselle was not blindfolded, she was able to take a closer look at the prisoner. He was still unconscious, had lost a lot of weight and his left hand was bandaged. Mademoiselle had touched his forehead and felt a strong fever.
Mademoiselle’s narrative broke off at that point, but she quickly took herself in hand.
‘How I wish this was all over,’ she said with a self-control that I found quite admirable. ‘Michel will not survive very long in conditions like that. He is a strong healthy child, but everything has its limits.’
‘Did you see Lind? Even out of the corner of your eye?’ I asked hopefully.
‘No. The blindfoldwas removed for no more than ten seconds and I was strictly forbidden to turn round. I only sensed that there were several men standing behind me.’