Hour of the Wolf

by Andrius B Tapinas

  The room had no windows and resembled a watchmaker’s shop. The innards of watches – springs, hands, faces, various screws and other loose parts – glittered in the dim light. At the desk, lit brightly by a lantern, sat a man. As there was no one else in the room, he must have unbolted the door himself before going back to his desk. Also a dwarf, but quite elderly and with a hump, he sported a short grey beard and his hair in a plait; fingerless leather gloves covered his hands and a watchmaker’s magnifying glass was stuck in his right eye socket. The lady guest’s appearance in the room made the man toss his head, and then swiftly catch the glass as it fell out of his eye socket.

  “You are right on the dot as usual, madam,” he said politely, pushing the object he had just been working on aside.

  “And I hope you are too,” Emilia retorted.

  The Russian agent did not take the trouble to appear polite but the man did not seem to be bothered. He slid off his chair, hobbled across the room and kneeled down on the floor to retrieve an oblong case from under the bed in the corner. He carefully picked it up, carried it to the desk and opened it. The faint light seemed to reveal the dull sheen of a dark metal, but a closer look confirmed the object to be made out of nearly black clinker.

  Emilia came nearer to the desk. Four clay balls, each the size of two fists, lay at the bottom of the case. A short thick glass tube, filled with wobbly purple jelly, was inserted in the top part of each ball.

  “Come, admire this. Isn’t it a magnificent job?” the man asked, expecting to be praised.

  A faint smile appeared on Emilia’s lips.

  “Yes, Kniaz[31],” was all she said.

  Mother Nature hadn’t been too kind to the hunchback the woman had just addressed as Kniaz when doling out height and appearance. But talent was a completely different department, and she had bestowed it on him without reservation. Once upon a time this man had been an outstanding watchmaker – the best horologist who had ever worked for the famous Klokmacher Company of Berlin. The Klokmachers were in no competition with the best in the world, the Junghanses, but they did make the most impressive timepieces, and Kniaz, who went by the name of Furst in Berlin, was more than happy with that. His clocks and watches were admired by the German aristocracy and well-off merchants; he created musical clocks, clocks with singing roosters and playing trumpeters, weight-driven clocks, spring-driven clocks and even clocks that told you the weather outside. He was always up to his elbows with orders from Russia, England, France and even faraway America.

  But eventually Furst became sick and tired of this job. He became drawn to Alchemy and began his search for a spark that would make his life more interesting. That was when he came across Johann Most – the famous German anarchist. The German, busy publicly proclaiming his revolutionary ideas and advocating the use of violence and bombs in the fight for them at the time, viewed the golden hands of Furst as a heaven-sent treasure. The hunchback started making alchemic bombs for Most and in a short while, the streets of Berlin, chemical factories in Ludwigshafen and the port of Hamburg had all been shaken by consecutive explosions. Even though Furst thought he had finally found his calling, he was not able to enjoy it for very long: the Kaiser’s secret police started breathing down the anarchists’ neck and they had to flee. Most escaped to America, while Furst travelled to the free Alliance, adopted the name of Kniaz and settled down in Vilnius.

  He kept in touch with Most and they even jointly published a booklet – Revolutionary War Science – a manual on the subject of bomb-making, which raised hell in America, earning the author the moniker Dynamost. Kniaz’s home was becoming a frequent meeting place for anarchists, revolutionaries and members of the Russian SR Combat Organisation. Most of the bombs causing a headaches for the Tsar’s gendarmerie in Minsk, Warsaw or even St Petersburg, had been born here, in the underground workshop of this peaceful watchmaker. The most prominent victim of Kniaz’s bombs had been the Russian Minister of the Interior and Commander of the Corps of Gendarmes, Pleve. SR member Sazonov threw a bomb, produced in a quiet Blots street in Vilnius, into his carriage as it was rolling down Izmailovsky Prospect in St Petersburg. But on this occasion, the Tsar’s Okhranka showed no mercy on SR and sniffed Kniaz out during the interrogations.

  The Russian Actual State Councillor Alexander Golytsin was about to issue an order to do away with the watchmaker when he was struck by a brilliant idea – why kill Kniaz when his skills might come in useful? This task was conferred on his charming lover Emilia. Once she had been supplied with money and letters of recommendation from ‘reliable revolutionary organisations’, gaining the old watchmaker’s trust proved a simple task. Besides, the job she had commissioned the hunchback to carry out was anything but ordinary.

  “So you mean you are going to blast our Father the Tsar, making the dust fly!” giggled Kniaz, clambering back on to his chair.

  Emilia carefully ran her finger over one of the clinker bombs. She then took the ball in both hands, lifted it up and inspected it in front of the lantern, turning it around.

  The purple jelly became cloudy.

  “Be careful,” warned Kniaz. “Keep it away from sources of heat. When you are ready to blow it up, bang the bottom of the ball. The lower part of the tube will break, allowing this precious purple commodity to mix with the explosives. Then you wait for five seconds, throw the bomb and run for your life. The blast will be so powerful, it will turn the sky and earth upside down.”

  The cold green eyes pierced Kniaz right through.

  “I think I clearly told you that I… my friends… wish to control the explosive from a distance, a rather great distance,” the woman said.

  As if in self-defence, the old man raised his gloved hands.

  “Of course, of course,” the words rushed out of his mouth while he rolled off his chair again, took the ball from Emilia and placed it back in the case, before clicking the lock on. He then removed a suede pouch from another drawer and shook its contents out onto the desk.

  Emilia saw a small metal tuning fork and a silver stick.

  “Here are your tools, madam,” the old man poked his finger at them. “Powerful vibration, caused by a single stroke of the stick against the tuning fork, will smash the tubes in all bombs within a radius of a hundred versts from you” – Kniaz smacked his lips in satisfaction. “At all other times keep your bombs in the case. It is constructed from vibration-resistant material. It all works like a dream,” he assured. “If you don’t believe me, talk to your comrades from the Nikolskaya Tower.”

  Emilia recalled a powerful explosion by the Nikolskaya Tower in Moscow, when the governor-general’s carriage had been torn to shreds and great damage was caused to the surrounding buildings.

  The old man continued with a few further instructions, and the lady committed them firmly to memory.

  “You must be very quick. Exceptionally quick,” Kniaz added before she started to depart.

  But there was one more task from Golytsin that Emilia had to complete. A gun suddenly materialised in her hand.

  “I promise,” she said, before shooting the old man in the heart.

  Chapter XXIII

  Vilnius, Late afternoon

  24 04 1905

  Vilnius Vitamancer financier Tomash Ujeiskiy was pacing the room and munching on a piece of bread and sausage, taking one last look around his dilapidated but cosy common-house room. The wait was making him restless. The suitcase was waiting by the door, while neatly placed in his jacket pocket were two tickets for the overnight dirigible The Moonlight Sonata. They would greet the morning in Berlin, from where the world would be their oyster – from the land of promises, America, to the ever-sunny beaches of Rio. This thought was enough to put Tomash on cloud nine, and he happily closed his eyes. He was so thrilled that once in his life he had gathered his courage and allowed Felix to drag him into this reckless enterprise.

  A few days after that crucial evening when, sipping champagne in bed, he had confided to his lover Felix Porcijank
a that he had seen some top-secret drawings at work, the accountant of the Guild of Mechanics Felix, amidst sighs and moans, had admitted to being blackmailed, and at the same time outlined a plan for how to get rid of his tormentor and even strike it rich. Tomash initially became apoplectic. However, the prospect of dropping everything and just the two of them living in some gorgeous little heavenly corner of the earth was impossible to resist, and he decided to take the risk. It later appeared that his worries had been unfounded – copying the drawings was a simple matter and he managed to do it without being detected. By now they should be in St Petersburg, Kiev or Moscow. Actually, Ujeiskiy didn’t care a fig about where they were, as he was much too preoccupied being happy about the two tickets warming his side and the thought that as soon as Felix came back, he would embark on an exhilarating new period of his life.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “At last,” Ujeiskiy gave a sigh of relief and made his way into the hall.

  “How long is it taking you...” he opened the door with mouth open ready to reproach his lover – then he froze.

  It was not his companion Felix Porcijanka, but a tall man in a grey suit and a hat. Tomash was no doubt surprised but he wasn’t scared, as the man was Gustav Schacht, or simply brother Schacht – the always cheerful lawyer of the Vitamancer Lodge. His colleagues knew that Ujeiskiy was leaving on a well-deserved holiday, and pedantic Gustav must have felt the need to clarify something.

  “I do apologise for my last-minute call,” Gustav said jauntily. “As I can see you are all ready for the journey.” He stepped into the hall and, without any invitation, hung his hat on the intricate deer antler hanger on the wall. “I noticed that I don’t have copies of your travel documents, so here I am.”

  Ujeiskiy, his mind more at ease than a moment ago, reached for the documents in his raincoat pocket. Meanwhile, Schacht wandered into the sitting room, then to the window, where he glanced outside through a chink in the curtains. The dark yard was empty. Having successfully lost his Legionnaire pursuers in the maze of little streets of Snipiskes, he waited for dusk to descend before deftly concealing his serpolett behind some luxuriant bushes in a street round the corner.

  Ujeiskiy shuffled into the room.

  “Here you are,” he said placing on the table his Alliance citizen’s passport, bound in a cardboard cover, together with an unfolded permit to travel.

  “Fine,” said Brother Gustav cheerfully, shoving his hand in his pocket. “If you could write your details down, I will be out of here in no time at all.”

  For some reason his gesture made Ujeiskiy flinch, his eyes frettingly lingering over the guest’s pocket with the hand inside. A moment later, however, a simple mechanical fountain-pen and a square piece of paper were all that materialised out of the visitor’s pocket, and Ujeiskiy’s tension burst with a nervous laugh. He lowered himself onto the chair, pulled the paper closer and, holding the guest’s fountain-pen with its wound up spring slowly pushing the ink to the nib, began to copy his travel documents, his eyes darting between the two pieces of paper.

  Casually whistling a tune, Gustav Schacht approached the flat owner from behind and took a curious glance over his shoulder.

  “Your handwriting is truly beautiful, my friend,” he complimented. “And you are so fast.” He patted Ujeiskiy’s shoulder. “Tell me, did you copy the secret drawings in fountain-pen? Or a plain pencil?”

  Tomash Ujeiskiy’s hand froze in the air.

  “What?” that was all he managed to say in his thunderstruck state, as his throat was instantly girded with a silk cord.

  Few people knew that the cheerful brother Gustav was not only a lawyer, but also the principal executioner of Vilnius Vitamancer Lodge. Now was the moment when he put to use his second vocation – he threw the cord around Ujeiskiy’s neck and forcefully pulled both its ends. Tomash gasped for air, reflexively tried to grab the cord and pull it from his throat, but the two men were separated by a large gulf in strength. For a while, Ujeiskiy’s nails pointlessly scratched at the skin of his throat, until the killer crossed his hands and further tightened the cord.

  “You have betrayed the Lodge, you miserable lowlife,” he said through clenched teeth. “Because of you our property has found way into the paws of the Legion’s dogs. But you had no idea they would bring the drawings back and show them to our Elder. You had no idea, did you? You had no idea that all the Elder had to do to identify the person who had been handling them, was to trace his hand over the drawings. How much did you get paid, traitor?”

  The answer never came. The victim rasped and wheezed, until after less than a minute his eyes bulged out and his body went limp. His gaping mouth released a trickle of blood, and then a lifeless tongue. But Schacht kept on pulling the silk cord. Only when truly confident that the bean-counter was dead did he finally release it, allowing Ujeiskiy to fall face down on the table. The fountain-pen flew into the air, splashing the worthless documents with blue ink tears.

  The cord folded neatly and returned to his pocket, Schacht walked over to the window for another glimpse of the yard outside. It hadn’t changed much – it was still dark and empty but for a resident at the front door, who had stopped to urinate on his way from a drinking spree at the inn. Without making any physical contact with the corpse, the killer collected his fountain-pen and the paper with the writing, then went back to the hallway, grabbed his hat off the hook and pulled it down low over his eyes. He left the room, closing the door behind him, then slipped down the stairs and quietly slipped out into the dark.

  A late carriage drew the attention of two of the Legate’s men, who so far had been fruitlessly scrutinising the surrounding streets for any sight of Felix. Exchanging glances, the Legionnaires concealed themselves in the arch of a dark gateway. The carriage stopped right opposite them. Out scrambled a short fat man. He bent down, his bottom protruding into the air. Huffing and puffing, he lifted out a suitcase bursting at its seams, then another bag with something clinking inside of it. With the carriage out of sight, the fatty anxiously looked around. Not noticing anything suspicious, he crept through the gateway, his hands clutching the bags, and puffed over towards one of the common-use houses, situated a bit further away from the road.

  The Legionnaires crept after the man. Seconds later, when they were at the entrance to the stairway, a heart-breaking wail shattered the silence of the night. The detectives flew up the stairs to the first floor, where the wail was coming from the flat on the left.

  They found Felix Porcijanka tearing his hair in grief by the side of the dead body, while a puddle of bubbling liquid expanded under a bag in the corner, the broken necks of several champagne bottles protruding from it.

  Chapter XXIV

  Vilnius, Evening

  24 04 1905

  The mail balloon – the accessory to Antanas Sidabras’ escape from Novovileysk – returned to Vilnius. Before flying off to tend to its own business, it hung briefly over the roof of Sluskai Palace, allowing its unusual passenger to alight. The pilot swore on his life to keep the Novovileysk adventure to himself, but Legate Sidabras was absolutely confident that as soon as the postman set his foot in one of the Mirth City inns, his tongue would flap loose, not just relaying the story truthfully but also spicing it up with a multitude of figments of his imagination. Following his descent, the Legate spent a good hour in a tub of the steaming Sluskai baths, trying to rub the soot and stench off his body. Hot water had a soothing effect on his bones, which were now aching from the gymnastics on the dirigible. Besides, it was a good oasis of calm to ponder over the recent developments.

  “It doesn’t matter, no one will ever believe it anyway,” he said to himself as he went back to the past events in his thoughts. “Of course, it is a shame we lost the second serpolett.”

  As soon as the Legate was back in Sluskai, he heard this news from the corporal, who had reported to him sadly and sheepishly. It appeared that the confusing maze of Snipiskes was the place where he had
finally lost sight of his prey. But the Novovileysk had been worth all the effort anyway, Sidabras thought to himself. They could go back to the people locked up in that loony house later. What mattered most was that he already had grabbed the end of the thread.

  The mysterious prisoner of Novovileysk hospital Pranciskus Baltrus... Initially looked after by Vitamancers, then locked up in a hospital forsaken by both God and men alike. So that no one would find him? But who would look for him? Who were the people who had discovered him and succeeded in releasing him from hospital? What was so important about him? And why had the Legate’s visit with the drawings on his person fired up the Vitamancers’ immediate search for him? The race – a search for the “needle” in the human anthill of free Vilnius – had begun, and its two competitors were the Vitamancers and the Legionnaires.

  Despite everything, the position of Vilnius Legionnaires was slightly more advantageous. They had the machine. And they had Aloysius Nunevicius.

  His bathing over, Sidabras climbed down to the Sluskai cellars – the rooms that most people didn’t even know existed, which were situated underneath the solitary confinement cells.

  He was met by an elderly man with straggling broom-like sideburns and thick-lensed glasses sitting on his nose.

  “Insert them in your ears, Legate,” he said handing him a small elongated box.

  Sidabras glanced at the box. An inscription on it read: Ear Plugs The Peace of Vilnius.

  “Have you gone totally mad, Aloysius?” he blurted crossly.

  “I most certainly have not, Legate. But I would have, had I not used them myself,” the owner of the sideburns retorted with no hesitation, immediately stuffing them in his own ears.

  With a shrug Sidabras did the same. And once he was in that other room, he realized he had made the right decision.

  There was an obvious reason why the room – the domain of the old Mechanic Aloysius – was set in the lowest of all the Sluskai cellars. The roar and rumble of the massive machine, resembling the wails of a dying bison, was nothing but deafening. The floors and walls vibrated, while the ceiling rained tiny dust-like particles of plaster. The mechanism looked like a crazy collection of screws, pipes, bolts, dynamos and handles, rearing up through several floors and powered by a gigantic old steam boiler. The overall discord was complemented by the hissing steam escaping through the seams of the boiler. Remaining in the room without The Peace of Vilnius ear plugs would have been unbearable.