The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  At this point she finally calmed down completely, turned her gaze on her companion and introduced herself punctiliously.

  ‘Glyceria Romanovna Lidina.’

  The staff captain told her his name too.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ the lady told him with a smile. ‘I must explain, since you have witnessed this monstrous spectacle. Georges simply adores histrionic scenes, especially in front of an audience!’

  ‘Is he really an artiste, then?’

  Glyceria Romanovna fluttered her almost inch-long eyelashes incredulously.

  ‘What? You don’t know Astralov? The tenor Astralov. His name is on all the show bills!’

  ‘I’m not much for theatres,’ Rybnikov replied with an indifferent shrug. ‘I don’t have any time to go strutting about at operas, you know. And it’s beyond my pocket, anyway. My pay’s miserly, they’re delaying the pension, and life in Petersburg is too pricey by half. The cabbies take seventy kopecks for every piddling little ride …’

  Lidina was not listening, she wasn’t even looking at him any more.

  ‘We’ve been married for two years!’ she said, as if she were not addressing her prosaic companion, but a more worthy audience, which was listening to her with sympathetic attention. ‘Ah, I was so in love! But now I realise it was the voice I loved, not him. What a voice he has! He only has to start singing and I melt, he can wrap me round his little finger. And he knows it, the scoundrel! Did you see the way he started singing just now, the cheap manipulator? Thank goodness the bell interrupted him, my head was already starting to spin!’

  ‘A handsome gentleman,’ the staff captain acknowledged, trying to suppress a yawn. ‘Probably gets his fair share of crumpet. Is that what the drama’s all about?’

  ‘They told me about him!’ Glyceria Romanovna exclaimed with her eyes flashing. ‘There are always plenty of “well-wishers” in the world of theatre. But I didn’t believe them. And then I saw it with my own eyes! And where? In my own drawing room! And who with? That old floozy Koturnova! I’ll never set foot in that desecrated apartment again! Or in Petersburg either!’

  ‘So you’re moving to Moscow, then?’ the staff captain summed up. It was clear from his tone of voice that he was impatient to put an end to this trivial conversation and settle into his newspaper.

  ‘Yes, we have another apartment in Moscow, on Ostozhenka Street. Georges sometimes takes an engagement for the winter at the Bolshoi.’

  At this, Rybnikov finally concealed himself behind Evening Russia and the lady was obliged to fall silent. She nervously picked up the Russian Assembly, ran her eyes over the article on the front page and tossed it aside, muttering:

  ‘My God, how vulgar! Completely undressed, in the road! Could she really have been stripped totally and completely naked? Who is this Countess N.? Vika Olsufieva? Nelly Vorontsova? Ah, it doesn’t matter anyway.’

  Outside the windowpane, dachas, copses of trees and dreary vegetable patches drifted by. The staff captain rustled his newspaper, enthralled.

  Lidina sighed, then sighed again. She found the silence oppressive.

  ‘What’s that you find so fascinating to read?’ she eventually asked, unable to restrain herself.

  ‘Well, you see, it’s the list of officers who gave their lives for the tsar and the fatherland in the sea battle beside the island of Tsushima. It came through the European telegraph agencies, from Japanese sources. The scrolls of mourning, so to speak. They say they’re going to continue it in forthcoming issues. I’m looking to see if any of my comrades-in-arms are there.’ And Vasilii Alexandrovich started reading out loud, with expression, savouring the words. ‘On the battleship Prince Kutuzov-Smolensky: junior flagman, Rear Admiral Leontiev; commander of the vessel, Commodore Endlung; paymaster of the squadron, State Counsellor Ziukin; chief officer, Captain Second Rank von Schwalbe …’

  ‘Oh, stop!’ said Glyceria Romanovna, fluttering her little hand. ‘I don’t want to hear it! When is this terrible war ever going to end!’

  ‘Soon. The insidious enemy will be crushed by the Christian host,’ Rybnikov promised, setting the newspaper aside to take out a little book, in which he immersed himself with even greater concentration.

  The lady screwed her eyes up short-sightedly, trying to make out the title, but the book was bound in brown paper.

  The train’s brakes screeched and it came to a halt.

  ‘Kolpino?’ Lidina asked in surprise. ‘Strange, the express never stops here.’

  Rybnikov stuck his head out of the window and called to the duty supervisor.

  ‘Why are we waiting?’

  ‘We have to let a special get past, Officer, it’s got urgent military freight.’

  While her companion was distracted, Glyceria Romanovna seized the chance to satisfy her curiosity. She quickly opened the book’s cover, held her pretty lorgnette on a gold chain up to her eyes and puckered up her face. The book that the staff captain had been reading so intently was called TUNNELS AND BRIDGES: A concise guide for railway employees.

  A telegraph clerk clutching a paper ribbon in his hand ran up to the station supervisor, who read the message, shrugged and waved his little flag.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Rybnikov.

  ‘Don’t know if they’re coming or going. Orders to dispatch you and not wait for the special.’

  The train set off.

  ‘I suppose you must be a military engineer?’ Glyceria Romanovna enquired.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Lidina felt embarrassed to admit that she had peeped at the title of the book, but she found a way out – she pointed to the leather tube.

  ‘That thing. It’s for drawings, isn’t it?’

  ‘Ah, yes.’ Vasilii Alexandrovich lowered his voice. ‘Secret documents. I’m delivering them to Moscow.’

  ‘And I thought you were on leave. Visiting your family, or your parents, perhaps.’

  ‘I’m not married. Where would I get the earnings to set up a family? I’m dog poor. And I haven’t got any parents, I’m an orphan. And in the regiment they used to taunt me for a Tatar because of my squinty eyes.’

  After the stop at Kolpino the staff captain brightened up somewhat and became more talkative, and his broad cheekbones even turned slightly pink.

  Suddenly he glanced at his watch and stood up.

  ‘Pardon, I’ll just go out for a smoke.’

  ‘Smoke here, I’m used to it,’ Glyceria Romanovna told him graciously. ‘Georges smokes cigars. That is, he used to.’

  Vasilii Alexandrovich smiled in embarrassment.

  ‘I’m sorry. When I said a smoke, I was being tactful. I don’t smoke, an unnecessary expense. I’m actually going to the WC, on a call of nature.’

  The lady turned away with a dignified air.

  The staff captain took the tube with him. Catching his female companion’s indignant glance, he explained in an apologetic voice:

  ‘I’m not allowed to let it out of my hands.’

  Glyceria Romanovna watched him go and murmured:

  ‘He really is quite unpleasant.’ And she started looking out of the window.

  But the staff captain walked quickly through second class and third class to the carriage at the tail of the train and glanced out on to the brake platform.

  There was an insistent, lingering blast on a whistle from behind.

  The conductor-in-chief and a gendarme sentry were standing on the platform.

  ‘What the hell!’ said the conductor. ‘That can’t be the special. They telegraphed to say it was cancelled!’

  The long train was following them no more than half a verst away, drawn by two locomotives, puffing out black smoke. A long tail of flat wagons cased in tarpaulin stretched out behind it.

  The hour was already late, after ten, but the twilight had barely begun to thicken – the season of white nights was approaching.

  The gendarme looked round at the staff captain and saluted.

  ‘Begging your pard
on, Your Honour, but please be so good as to close the door. Instructions strictly forbid it.’

  ‘Quite right, old fellow,’ Rybnikov said approvingly. ‘Vigilance, and all the rest of it. I just wanted to have a smoke, actually. Well, I’ll just do it in the corridor here. Or in the WC.’

  And he went into the toilet, which in third class was cramped and not very clean.

  After locking himself in, Vasilii Alexandrovich stuck his head out of the window.

  The train was just moving on to an antediluvian bridge, built in the old Count Kleinmichel style, which spanned a narrow little river.

  Rybnikov stood on the flush lever and a hole opened up in the bottom of the toilet. Through it he could clearly see the sleepers flickering past.

  The staff captain pressed some invisible little button on the tube and stuffed the narrow leather case into the hole – the diameter matched precisely, so he had to employ a certain amount of force.

  When the tube had disappeared through the hole, Vasilii Alexandrovich quickly moistened his hands under the tap and walked out into the vestibule of the carriage, shaking the water from his fingers.

  A minute later, he was already walking back into his own compartment.

  Lidina looked at him severely – she still had not forgiven him for that ‘call of nature’ – and was about to turn away, when she suddenly exclaimed:

  ‘Your secret case! You must have forgotten it in the toilet!’

  An expression of annoyance appeared on Rybnikov’s face, but before he could answer Glyceria Romanovna there was a terrifying crash and the carriage lurched and swayed.

  The staff captain dashed to the window. There were heads protruding from the other windows too, all of them looking back along the line.

  At that point the line curved round in a small arc and they had a clear view of the tracks, the river they had just crossed and the bridge.

  Or rather, what was left of it.

  The bridge had collapsed at its precise centre, and at the precise moment when the line of heavy military flat wagons was crossing it.

  The catastrophe was an appalling sight: a column of water and steam, splashed up into the air as the locomotives crashed down into the water, upended flat wagons with massive steel structures tumbling off them and – most terrible of all – a hail of tiny human figures showering downwards.

  Glyceria Romanovna huddled against Rybnikov’s shoulder and started squealing piercingly. Other passengers were screaming too.

  The tail-end carriage of the special, probably reserved for officers, teetered on the very edge of the break. Someone seemed to jump out of the window just in time, but then the bridge support buckled and the carriage went plunging downwards too, into the heap of twisted and tangled metal protruding from the water.

  ‘My God, my God!’ Lidina started screaming hysterically. ‘Why are you just looking? We have to do something!’

  She dashed out into the corridor. Vasilii Alexandrovich hesitated for only a second before following her.

  ‘Stop the train!’ the small lady gabbled hysterically, throwing herself on the conductor-in-chief, who was running towards the leading carriage. ‘There are wounded men there! They’re drowning! We have to save them!’

  She grabbed him by the sleeve so tenaciously that the railwayman had no choice but to stop.

  ‘What do you mean, save them? Save who? In that shambles!’ Pale as death, the captain of the train crew tied to pull himself free. ‘What can we do? We have to get to a station, to report this.’

  Glyceria Romanovna refused to listen and pounded him on the chest with her little fist.

  ‘They’re dying, and we just leave them? Stop! I demand it!’ she squealed. ‘Press that emergency brake of yours, or whatever you call it!’

  Hearing her howling, a dark-complexioned man with a little waxed moustache put his head out of the next compartment. Seeing the captain of the train hesitate, he shouted menacingly:

  ‘Don’t you dare stop! I’ve got urgent business in Moscow!’

  Rybnikov took Lidina gently by the elbow and started speaking soothingly:

  ‘Really and truly, madam. Of course, it’s a terrible disaster, but the only thing we can do to help is telegraph as soon as possible from the next …’

  ‘Ah, to hell with all of you!’ shouted Glyceria Romanovna.

  She darted to the emergency handle and pulled it.

  Everyone in the train went tumbling head over heels to the floor. The train gave a hop and started screeching sickeningly along the rails. There were howls and screams on every side – the passengers thought their train had crashed.

  The first to recover his senses was the man with the dark complexion, who had not fallen, but only banged his head against the lintel of the door.

  With a cry of ‘You rrrotten bitch, I’ll kill you!’ he threw himself on the hysterical woman, who had been stunned by her fall, and grabbed her by the throat.

  The small flames that glinted briefly in Vasilii Alexandrovich’s eyes suggested that he might possibly have shared the swarthy gentleman’s bloody intentions to some extent. However, there was more than just fury in the glance that the staff captain cast at Glyceria Romanovna as she was being strangled – there was also something like stupefaction.

  Rybnikov sighed, grabbed the intemperate dark-haired man by the collar and tossed him aside.

  The fourth syllable, in which a hired gun sets out on the hunt

  The phone rang at half past one in the morning. Before he even lifted the receiver to answer, Erast Petrovich Fandorin gestured to his valet to hand him his clothes. A telephone call at this hour of the night could only be from the Department, and it had to be about some emergency or other.

  As he listened to the voice rumbling agitatedly in the earpiece, Fandorin knitted his black eyebrows tighter and tighter together. He switched hands, so that Masa could slip his arm into the sleeve of a starched shirt. He shook his head at the shoes – the valet understood and brought his boots.

  Erast Petrovich did not ask the person on the phone a single question, he simply said:

  ‘Very well, Leontii Karlovich, I’ll be there straight away.’

  Once he was dressed, he stopped for a moment in front of the mirror. He combed his black hair threaded with grey (the kind they call ‘salt-and-pepper’), ran a special little brush over his entirely white temples and his neat moustache, in which there was still not a single silver hair. He frowned after running his hand across his cheek, but there was no time to shave.

  He walked out of the apartment.

  The Japanese was already sitting in the automobile, holding a travelling bag in his hand.

  The most valuable quality of Fandorin’s valet was not that he did everything quickly and precisely, but that he knew how to manage without unnecessary talk. From the choice of footwear, Masa had guessed there was a long journey in prospect, so he had equipped himself accordingly.

  With its mighty twenty-horsepower engine roaring, the twin-cylinder Oldsmobile surged down Sadovaya Street, where Fandorin was lodging, and a minute later it was already gliding across the Chernyshevsky Bridge. A feeble drizzle was trickling down from the grey, unconvincing night sky, and glinting on the road. The remarkable ‘Hercules’ brand non-splash tyres glided over the black asphalt.

  Two minutes later the automobile braked to a halt at house number 7 on Kolomenskaya Street, where the offices of the St Petersburg Railway Gendarmerie and Police were located.

  Fandorin set off up the steps at a run, with a nod to the sentry, who saluted him. But his valet remained sitting in the Oldsmobile, and even demonstratively turned his back.

  From the very beginning of the armed conflict between the two empires, Masa – who was Japanese by birth, but a Russian citizen according to his passport – had declared that he would remain neutral, and he had stuck scrupulously to this rule. He had not delighted in the heroic feats of the defenders of Port Arthur, nor had he rejoiced at the victories of Japanese armies. But mo
st importantly of all, as a matter of principle, he had not stepped across the threshold of any military institutions, which at times had caused both him and his master considerable inconvenience.

  The valet’s moral sufferings were exacerbated still further by the fact that, following several arrests on suspicion of espionage, he had been obliged to disguise his nationality. Fandorin had procured a temporary passport for his servant in the name of a Chinese gentleman, so that now, whenever Masa left the house, he was obliged to put on a wig with a long pigtail. According to the document, he bore the impossible name of ‘Lianchan Shankhoevich Chaiunevin’. As a consequence of all these ordeals, the valet had lost his appetite and grown lean, and had even given up breaking the hearts of housemaids and seamstresses, with whom he had enjoyed vertiginous success during the pre-war period.

  These were hard times, not only for the false Lianchan Shankhoevich, but also for his master.

  When Japanese destroyers attacked the Port Arthur squadron without warning, Fandorin was on the other side of the world, in the Dutch West Indies, where he was conducting absolutely fascinating research in the area of underwater navigation.

  At first Erast Fandorin had wanted nothing to do with a war between two countries that were both close to his heart, but as the advantage swung more and more towards Japan, Fandorin gradually lost interest in the durability of aluminium, and even in the search for the galleon San Felipe, which had gone down with its load of gold in the year ad 1708 seven miles south-south-east of the island of Aruba. On the very day when Fandorin’s submarine finally scraped its aluminium belly across the stump of the Spanish mainmast protruding from the sea bottom, news came of the loss of the battleship Petropavlosk, together with Commander-in-Chief Admiral Makarov and the entire crew.

  The next morning Fandorin set out for his homeland, leaving his associates to deal with raising the gold bars to the surface.