Special Assignments

by Boris Akunin

  He had to assume that the master's chambers were over there, behind that white door with the moulding. Momos went out into the corridor, squeezed his eyes shut and stood like that for about a minute to let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. But after that he moved quickly, without making a sound.

  He opened one door a little: it was the music room. Another -that was the dining room. A third - still not the right one.

  He recalled that Tarik-bei had pointed upwards. That meant he had to go up to the first floor.

  He slipped out into the vestibule and ran silently up the carpet-covered staircase - the gendarmes didn't even glance round. Another long corridor with another row of doors.

  The bedroom turned out to be the third on the left. The moon was shining into the window and Momos could easily make out the bed, the motionless silhouette under the blanket and - hoorah! - the little white mound on the small bedside table. A moonbeam fell on the turban, and a bright ray was reflected from the glittering stone, straight into Momos's eye.

  Momos approached the bed, walking on tiptoe. Ahmad-Khan was sleeping on his back, with his face covered by the edge of the blanket - all that could be seen was a head of short-trimmed, spiky black hair.

  'Hushaby hushaby' Momos whispered gently as he placed a jack of spades right on the sleeper's stomach.

  He reached out cautiously for the stone. When his fingers touched the smooth, gleaming surface of the emerald, a strangely familiar hand with short fingers suddenly shot out from under the blanket and seized Momos's wrist in a tight grip.

  He squealed in surprise and jerked away with a start, but it was pointless: the hand had taken a firm hold on him. The blanket had slipped down, and gazing out at Momos from under its corner was the fat-cheeked physiognomy of Fandorin's valet, with its unblinking slanty eyes.

  'I've been d-dreaming of meeting you for a long time, Monsieur Momos,' a low, mocking voice said behind his back. 'Erast Petrovich Fandorin at your service.'

  Momos swung his head round like a trapped animal and saw that there was someone sitting in the tall Voltaire chair in the dark corner, with one leg crossed over the other.

  CHAPTER 7

  The Chief Is Amused

  'Dzi-ing, dzi-ing!

  The piercing, monotonous ringing of the electric bell penetrated Anisii's drifting consciousness from somewhere far away, on the other side of the world. Tulipov did not even realise at first what this new phenomenon could be that had supplemented the picture of God's wonderful world, already so incredibly enriched. However, a whisper of alarm from the darkness roused the sleuth from his state of bliss.

  'On sonne! Qu'est que c'est?

  Anisii jerked upright, immediately remembered everything and freed himself from a gentle, but at the same time remarkably tenacious, embrace.

  The signal! The trap had been sprung! Oh, this was bad! How could he have forgotten his duty?

  'Pardon,' he muttered, 'tout de suite.'

  In the darkness he felt for his Indian robe, shuffled on his slippers and dashed to the door without turning back to answer the insistent voice that was still asking questions. Bounding out into the corridor, he locked the door with two turns of the key. There, now she wouldn't be flitting off anywhere. It was no ordinary room: it had steel bars on the windows. When the key scraped in the lock, he felt a sickening scraping sensation in his heart as well, but duty is duty.

  Anisii shuffled smartly along the corridor in his 'bedroom slippers'. On the upper landing of the staircase the moon peeped in through the corridor window, plucking out of the darkness a white figure running towards him. The mirror!

  Tulipov froze for a moment, trying to make out his own face in the gloom. Was it true? Was this him - little Anisii, the deacon's son, the imbecile Sonya's brother? If the happy gleam in the eyes were anything to go by (and in any case, he couldn't see anything else), it wasn't him at all, but someone quite different, someone Anisii didn't know at all.

  He opened the door into Ahmad-Khan's' bedroom and heard Erast Petrovich's voice.

  '... You will pay in full for all your pranks, Mr Jester. For the banker Polyakov's trotters, and for the merchant Patrikeev's "river of gold", and for the English lord, and for the lottery. And also for your cynical escapade directed against me, and for obliging me to smear myself with tincture of Brazil nut and walk around in an idiotic turban for five days.'

  Tulipov already knew that when the Court Counsellor stopped stammering, it was a bad sign - Mr Fandorin was either under extreme stress or damnably angry. It this case it was obviously the latter.

  The stage in the bedroom was set as follows: the elderly Georgian woman was sitting on the floor beside the bed, with her monumental nose strangely skewed to one side. Towering up over her from behind, with his sparse eyebrows knitted in a furious frown and his hands thrust bellicosely against his sides, was Masa, dressed in a long white nightshirt. Erast Petrovich himself was sitting in an armchair in the corner of the room, tapping on the armrest with an unlit cigar. His face was expressionless, his voice was deceptively languid, but its suppressed rumblings of thunder made Anisii wince.

  The Chief turned to his assistant and asked: 'Well, how is our little bird?'

  'In the cage,' Tulipov reported, waving the key with the double bit.

  The 'chaperone' looked at the agent's hand raised in triumph and shook his head sceptically.

  A-ah, Mr Eunuch,' the crooked-nosed woman said in such a resonant, rolling baritone that Anisii started. A bald head suits you.' And the repulsive hag stuck out her broad, red tongue.

  And women's clothes suit you,' retorted Tulipov, stung. He instinctively raised a hand to his naked scalp.

  'B-Bravo,' said Fandorin, approving his assistant's quick wit. 'I would advise you, Mr Jack, to show less bravado. You are in real trouble this time; you have been caught red-handed.'

  Two days earlier, Anisii had been confused at first when the 'Princess Chkhartishvili' had shown up for a stroll in the company of her chaperone. 'Chief, you said there were only two of them - the Jack of Spades and the girl, and now some old woman has turned up as well.'

  'You're an old woman yourself, Tulipov,' the 'prince' had hissed through his teeth as he bowed graciously to a lady walking in the opposite direction. That's him: our friend Momos. A virtuoso of disguise - give him his due. Except that his feet are a little large for a woman, and his gaze is rather too stern. It's him all right, my dear fellow. Couldn't be anyone else.'

  'Shall we take him in?' Anisii had whispered excitedly, pretending to be brushing the snow off his master's shoulder.

  'What for? The girl, now - well she was at the lottery, and we have witnesses. But nobody even knows what he looks like. What can we arrest him for? For dressing up as an old woman? Oh no, I've been looking forward to this; we have to be able to throw the book at this one: caught red-handed at the scene of the crime.'

  To be quite honest, at the time Tulipov had thought the Court Counsellor was being too clever by half. But, as always, things turned out as Fandorin had said they would. The grouse had gone for the decoy and they had him bang to rights. There was no way he could wriggle out of it now.

  Erast Petrovich struck a match, lit his cigar and began talking in a harsh, dry voice: 'Your greatest mistake, my dear sir, was deciding to joke at the expense of those who do not take kindly to being mocked.'

  Since the prisoner said nothing, concentrating on setting his nose back in place, Fandorin felt it necessary to explain: 'I mean, firstly, Prince Dolgorukoi and, secondly, myself. No one has ever had the insolence to scoff at my personal life so impudently. And with such unpleasant consequences for myself

  The Chief wrinkled up his brow in an expression of suffering. Anisii nodded in sympathy, remembering how things had been for Erast Petrovich before they were able to move from Malaya Nikitskaya Street to the Sparrow Hills.

  'Certainly it was pulled off very neatly, I won't deny it,' Fandorin continued, in control of himself once again. 'You will, o
f course, return the Countess's things, without delay, even before the trial begins. I will not charge you with that - in order not to drag Ariadna Arkadievna's name through the courts.'

  At this point the Court Counsellor began pondering something, then nodded to himself as if he were taking a difficult decision and turned to Anisii. 'Tulipov, if you would be so kind, check the things against the list drawn up by Ariadna Arkadievna ... send them to St Petersburg. The address is the house of Count and Countess Opraksin on the Fontanka Embankment.'

  Anisii merely sighed, not daring to express his feelings in any bolder manner. And Erast Petrovich, evidently angered by the decision that he himself had taken, turned back to his prisoner: 'Well then, you have had some good fun at my expense. But everyone knows that pleasures must be paid for. The next five years, which you will spend in penal servitude, will allow you plenty of time to learn some useful lessons about life. From now on you will know who can be joked with and who cannot.'

  From the flatness of Fandorin's tone, Anisii realised that his chief was absolutely raging furious.

  'If you will permit me, my dear Erast Petrovich,' the 'chaperone' drawled in a familiar fashion. 'Thank you for introducing yourself at the moment of my arrest, or I would still have believed you to be an Indian prince. But I am obliged to wonder how you have arrived at the figure of five years' penal servitude. Let us check our arithmetic. Some trotters or other, some river of gold, an English lord, a lottery - all sheer guesswork. What has all of that got to do with me? And then, you mention some things belonging to a countess? If they belong to Count Opraksin, then what where they doing in your home? Are you cohabiting with another man's wife? That's not good. Although, of course, it's none of my business. But if I am being accused of something, then I demand formal charges and proof. There absolutely has to be proof

  Anisii gasped at this insolence and glanced round anxiously at his chief. Fandorin chuckled ominously. And perhaps you would be so good as to tell me what you are doing here? - in this strange costume, at such a late hour?'

  'It was just a bit of foolishness,' the Jack replied with a sniff of regret, 'a foolish hankering after the emerald. But this, gentlemen, is what is known as "provocation". You even have gendarmes on guard downstairs. This is an entire police conspiracy'

  'The gendarmes don't know who we are,' said Anisii, unable to resist a chance to boast. And they're not part of any conspiracy. As far as they're concerned, we're orientals.'

  'It doesn't matter,' the rogue said dismissively. 'Just look how many of you there are - servants of the state, all lined up against one poor, unfortunate man whom you deliberately led into temptation. In court any decent lawyer will give you a whipping that will leave you itching for ages afterwards. And if I'm right, that stone of yours is worth no more than ten roubles at best. One month's detention at the most. And you talk to me about five years' penal servitude, Erast Petrovich. My arithmetic is more accurate.'

  And what about the jack of spades that you placed on the bed in front of two witnesses?' the Court Counsellor asked, angrily stubbing out his unfinished cigar in the ashtray.

  Ah, yes, that was a bit unnecessary' said the Jack, hanging his head repentantly. 'I suppose you could say it was cynical. I wanted to shift the blame on to the "Jack of Spades" gang. They're the talk of Moscow at the moment. I suppose they'll probably add a church penance to my month of detention for that. Never mind; I'll redeem my sin through prayer.' He crossed himself piously and winked at Anisii.

  Erast Petrovich jerked his chin, as if his collar were too tight, although the wide neck of his white shirt embroidered with oriental ornament was not fastened.

  'You have forgotten your female accomplice. She can't get out of the lottery charge. And I don't think she will agree to go to prison without you.'

  'Yes, Mimi likes company' the prisoner willingly agreed. 'Only I doubt that she'll sit quietly in your cage. Mr Eunuch, would you be so good as to let me take another look at that key?'

  Anisii glanced at his chief, tightened his grip on the key and showed it to the Jack from a distance.

  'Yes, I wasn't mistaken,' Momos said with a nod. 'An absolutely primitive, antiquated "grandmother's trunk" style of lock. Mimi can have one of those open in a second with a hairpin.'

  The Court Counsellor and his assistant were up and away in the same instant. Fandorin shouted something to Masa in Japanese - it must have been 'Keep a close eye on him' or something else of the sort. The Japanese took a tight grip of the Jack's shoulders, and Tulipov didn't see what happened after that, because he had already darted out through the door.

  They ran down the staircase and dashed across the vestibule, past the astounded gendarmes.

  Alas, the door of 'Tarik-bei's' room was standing ajar. Their little bird had flown!

  Erast Petrovich groaned as if he had toothache and went dashing back into the vestibule, with Anisii on his tail.

  'Where is she?' the Court Counsellor barked at the sergeant-major.

  The gendarme's jaw dropped at the shock of suddenly hearing the Indian prince speak in perfect Russian.

  Answer me, quickly now!' Fandorin shouted at the serviceman. 'Where's the girl?'

  'Well now ...' Just to be on the safe side the sergeant-major stuck on his helmet and saluted. 'She went out about five minutes ago. And she said her chaperone would stay on for a while.'

  'Five minutes!' Erast Petrovich repeated agitatedly. 'Tulipov, let's get after her! And you, keep your eyes peeled!' They ran down the steps of the porch, dashed through the garden and bounded out through the gates.

  ‘I’ll go right, you go left!' the Chief ordered.

  Anisii hobbled off along the fence. One slipper immediately got stuck in the snow and he had to hop along on one foot. The fence came to an end, and there was the white ribbon of the road, the black trees and bushes. Not a soul. Tulipov started spinning round on the spot, like a chicken with its head chopped off. Where should he look? Which way should he run?

  Below the steep bluff, on the far side of the icy river, the gigantic city lay spread out in an immense black bowl. It was almost invisible, with just occasional bright strings of street lights in the darkness, but the darkness was not empty, it was clearly alive: something down there was breathing drowsily, sighing, groaning. A brief gust of wind swept the fine white snow across the ground, piercing Anisii's light robe and chilling him to the marrow of his bones.

  He had to go back. Perhaps Erast Petrovich had had better luck?

  They met at the gates. Unfortunately, the Chief had returned alone too.

  Shivering from the cold, the two 'Indians' ran back into the house.

  Strange - the gendarmes were not at their post; but from upstairs, on the first floor, they could hear a loud clattering, swearing and shouting.

  'What the devil!' Still winded from their run along the street, Fandorfn and Anisii dashed up the stairs as fast as their legs would carry them.

  In the bedroom everything had been turned upside down. Masa was squealing in rage, with two gendarmes hanging on to his shoulders, and the sergeant-major was wiping a red ear with his sleeve but keeping his revolver trained on the Japanese.

  'Where is he?' asked Erast Petrovich, gazing around.

  Who?' the sergeant-major asked in bemusement, spitting out a broken tooth.

  'The Jack!' Anisii shouted. 'That is, I mean, that old woman!'

  Masa babbled something in his own language and the gendarme with the grey moustache stuck the barrel of his gun in his stomach: 'You shut it, you heathen swine! Well then, Your ...' The serviceman hesitated, unsure of how to address this strange superior. Well then, Your Hinduness, we're standing downstairs, keeping our eyes peeled, as ordered. Suddenly upstairs a woman starts shouting. "Help," she screams, "murder! Save me" So we come up here, and we look and see this slanty-eyed devil's got the old woman who was with the young lady down on the floor and taken her by the throat. The poor woman's screeching: "Save me. This Chinese robber broke in and attack
ed me!" He's muttering away in his own heathen tongue, something like: "Nowoma, nowoma!" He's a strong devil - look here, he knocked my tooth out and he stove in Tereshchenka's cheekbone too.'

  'Where is she - the old woman?' asked the Court Counsellor, grabbing the sergeant-major by the shoulders, obviously very hard - the gendarme turned as white as chalk.

  'She's here somewhere,' he hissed. 'Where could she have got to? She's got frightened and hidden away in a corner somewhere. She'll turn up. Ow, would you mind ... That hurts!'

  Erast Petrovich and Anisii exchanged glances without speaking.

  'Is it back to the chase, then?' Tulipov asked eagerly, thrusting his feet deeper into his slippers.

  'No, we've done enough running for Mr Momos's amusement,' Fandorin replied in a crestfallen voice.

  The Chief released his grip on the gendarme, sat down in an armchair and let his arms dangle lifelessly. A strange, incomprehensible change came over his face. A deep, horizontal crease appeared across his smooth brow; the corners of his lips slowly crept downwards; his eyes closed. When his shoulders began to shudder, Anisii felt afraid that Erast Petrovich was about to burst into tears.

  Then suddenly Fandorin slapped himself on the knee and broke into soundless peals of irrepressible, carefree laughter.

  CHAPTER 8

  'La Grande Operation'

  Momos held up the hem of his skirt as he dashed along the fences, past the empty dachas in the direction of the Kaluga highway. Every now and then he glanced round to see if there was anyone in pursuit, if he ought to dive into the bushes which -the Lord be praised! - grew thickly along both sides of the road.

  As he ran past a snowy grove of fir trees, a pitiful little voice called to him: 'Momchik, there you are at last! I'm frozen already'

  Mimi peeped out from under a spreading fir, rubbing her hands together pitifully. He was so relieved he sat down right there on the edge of the road, scooped up a handful of snow and pressed it against his perspiring brow.