The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  ‘With big ears, you say?’ the engineer asked, bending down and examining something on the floor. ‘Is this him?’

  He dragged out a dead body, holding it under the armpits. There was a short, thick arrow protruding from its chest.

  The agents clustered round their dead comrade, but the engineer was already hurrying into the opposite room.

  ‘The same trick,’ he announced to the senior agent, who had followed him in. ‘A secret spring under the parquet. A crossbow concealed in the cupboard. Instantaneous death – the point is smeared with poison. And the body is over there’ – he pointed to the mirror. ‘You can check for yourself.’

  But in this secret space, which was exactly like the previous one, there were three bodies.

  ‘Lepinsh,’ the agent said with a sigh, dragging out the top one. ‘Sapliukin. And Kutko’s underneath …’

  The fifth body was found in the bedroom, in the gap behind the wardrobe.

  ‘I don’t know how he managed to deal with them on his own … It probably happened like this,’ said Fandorin, recreating the scene. ‘The ones who went into the side rooms were killed first, by the arrows, and they were spirited away – “through the l-looking glass”. This one, in the bedroom, was killed with a bare hand – at least, there are no visible signs of injury. Sapliukin and this one, what’s his name, Lepinsh, have had their cervical vertebrae smashed. Lepinsh’s open mouth suggests that he caught a glimpse of his killer, but no more than that. The Acrobat killed these two in the hallway, dragged them into the room on the right and threw them on top of Kutko. The one thing I don’t understand is how Mylnikov survived. He must have amused the Japanese with his cries of “Banzai”. But that’s enough idle speculation. Our most important job is still ahead of us. You,’ he said, prodding one of the agents with his finger, ‘collect your deranged superior and take him to the Kanatchikovo mental clinic. And you two come with me.’

  ‘Where to, Mr Fandorin?’ asked the one who was a little older.

  ‘To the River Moscow. Damnation, half past twelve already, and we still have to look for a needle in a haystack!’

  Not an easy trick, finding a warehouse on the River Moscow when you don’t know which one it is. The old capital didn’t have a cargo port, and the goods wharves began at the Krasnokholmsky Bridge and stretched downstream for several versts, with breaks, all the way to Kozhukhovo.

  They started looking from Taganka, at the wharf of the Volga Basin Steamship Line and Trading Company. Then came the landing stage of the Kamensky Brothers Trading House, the warehouses of Madam Kashina’s Nizhny Novgorod Steamship Company, the freight sheds of the Moscow River Partnership, and so on, and so forth.

  They searched like this: they rode along the waterfront in a cab, gazing into the darkness and listening for any noise there might be. Who else would work at this desolate hour of the night, apart from men who had something to hide?

  Occasionally they went down to the river and listened to the water – most of the moorings were on the left bank, but once in a while there were some on the right bank too.

  They went back to the carriage and drove on.

  Erast Petrovich became gloomier and gloomier with every minute that passed.

  The search was dragging on – the Breguet in his pocket jangled twice. As though in reply, the clock on the tower of the Novospassky Monastery struck two, and the engineer’s thoughts turned to matters divine.

  The survival of the autocratic monarchy depends on the people’s belief in its mystical, supernatural origin, Fandorin thought sombrely. If that faith is undermined, Russia will suffer the same fate as Mylnikov. The people are observing the course of this wretched war and every day they are convinced that the Japanese God is stronger than the Russian one, or that he loves his anointed one more than ours loves the Tsar Nicholas. A constitution is the only possible salvation, mused the engineer – despite his mature age, he had not yet outgrown his tendency to idealism. The monarchy must shift the fulcrum of its authority from religiosity to rationality. The people must comply with the will of the authorities because they are in agreement with that will, not out of the fear of God. But if armed revolt breaks out now, it is the end of everything. And it no longer matters whether the monarchy is able to drown the rebellion in blood or not. The genie will escape from the bottle, and the throne will come crashing down anyway – if not now, then in a few years’ time, during the next convulsion …

  Large, paunchy iron tanks glinted in the darkness – the oil storage facilities of the Nobel Company. At this point the river made a bend.

  Erast Petrovich touched the driver on the shoulder to make him stop. He listened, and from somewhere on the water in the distance he could hear the clear sound of regular mechanical grunting.

  ‘Follow me,’ said the engineer, beckoning to the agents.

  They jogged through a clump of trees. The breeze carried the smell of crude oil to their nostrils – the Postyloe Lake was somewhere close by, behind the trees.

  ‘That’s it!’ gasped the senior agent (his name was Smurov). ‘Looks like them, all right!’

  Down below, at the bottom of a low slope, was the dark form of a long wharf, with several barges moored at it, and one of them, the smallest, was coupled to a steep-sided little tugboat under steam. It was its panting that Fandorin’s sharp hearing had detected.

  Two loaders carrying a crate ran out of a warehouse abutting the wharf and disappeared into the hold of the little barge. After them another one appeared, with something square on his shoulders, and ran down the same gangplank.

  ‘Yes, that’s them,’ Fandorin said with a smile, instantly forgetting his apocalyptic visions. ‘The s-sansculottes are in a hurry.’

  ‘The who?’ asked agent Kroshkin, intrigued by the unfamiliar word.

  Smurov, who was better read, explained.

  ‘They were armed militants, same as the SRs are. Haven’t you ever heard of the French Revolution? No? What about Napoleon? Well, that’s something at least.’

  Another loader ran out of the warehouse, then three at once, lugging along something very heavy. The flame of a match flared up in the corner of the berth and a second or two later shrank to a red dot. There were two more men standing there.

  The smile on the engineer’s face was replaced by a thoughtful expression.

  ‘There are quite a lot of them …’ Erast Petrovich looked around. ‘What’s that dark form over there? A bridge?’

  ‘Yes, sir. A railway bridge. For the ring road under construction.’

  ‘Excellent! Kroshkin, over in that direction, beyond Postyloe Lake, is the Kozhukhovo Station. Take the cab and get there as quick as you can. There must be a telephone at the station. Call Lieutenant Colonel Danilov at number 77-235. If the lieutenant colonel is not there, speak to the duty officer. Describe the s-situation. Tell him to put the watch and the duty detail, everyone they can find, on hand trolleys. And send them here. That’s all, run now. Only give me your revolver. And a supply of shells, if you have them. They’re no good to you, but we might find a g-good use for them.’

  The agent dashed off back to the carriage at full tilt.

  ‘Right then, Smurov, let’s creep a bit closer. There’s an excellent stack of rails over there.’

  While Thrush was lighting his pipe, Rybnikov glanced at his watch.

  ‘A quarter to three. It will be dawn soon.’

  ‘It’s all right, we’ll get it done. The bulk of it’s already been loaded.’ The SR nodded at a big barge. ‘There’s just the stuff for Sormovo left. That’s nothing, only a fifth of the load. Look lively now, comrades, look lively!’

  They may be your comrades, but you’re not lugging any crates, Vasilii Alexandrovich thought in passing as he tried to calculate when would be best to bring up the most important subject – the timing of the uprising.

  Thrush set off unhurriedly towards the warehouse. Rybnikov followed him.

  ‘When’s the Moscow load going?’ he asked, meaning th
e big barge.

  ‘The rivermen will move it to Fili tomorrow. Then on to somewhere else from there. We’ll keep moving it from place to place, so it won’t attract unwanted attention. And the small one here will go straight to Sormovo now, down the Moscow river, then the Oka.’

  Almost no crates were left in the warehouse now, there were just flat boxes of wires and remote control devices.

  ‘How do you say “merci” in your language?’ Thrush asked with a grin.

  ‘Arigato.’

  ‘So, it’s a big proletarian arigato to you, Mr Samurai. You’ve done your job, we’ll manage without you now.’

  Rybnikov broached the most important subject, speaking in a grave voice.

  ‘Well, then. The strike has to start within the next three weeks. And the uprising within six weeks …’

  ‘Don’t give me orders, Marshal Oyama. We’ll figure all that out for ourselves,’ the SR interrupted. ‘We’re not going to dance to your tune. I think we’ll hit them in the autumn.’ He grinned. ‘Until then you can keep plucking away at Tsar Nick’s feathers and fluff. Let the people see him stripped naked. That’s when we’ll lamp him hard.’

  Vasilii Alexandrovich smiled back at him. Thrush never even guessed that at that second his life and the lives of his eight comrades hung by a thread.

  ‘But that’s really not right. We agreed,’ said Rybnikov, raising his hands reproachfully.

  Sparks of mischief glinted in the revolutionary leader’s eyes.

  ‘To keep a promise made to a representative of an imperialist power is a bourgeois prejudice,’ he declared, and puffed on his pipe. ‘And what would “see you around” be in your language?’

  A workman nearby hoisted the final box on to his back and said in surprise:

  ‘This is far too light. Not empty, is it?’

  He put it back down on the ground.

  ‘No,’ explained Vasilii Alexandrovich, opening the lid. ‘It’s a selection of leads and wires for various purposes. This one is a fuse, this is a camouflage lead and this one, with the rubber covering, is for underwater mines.’

  Thrush was interested in that. He took out the bright-red coil and examined it. He caught the metal core between his finger and thumb – it slipped out of the waterproof covering easily.

  ‘A smart idea. Laying mines underwater? Maybe we could knock off the royal yacht? I have this man in my team, a real desperate character … I’ll have to think about it.’

  The loader picked up the box and ran out on to the wharf.

  Meanwhile Rybnikov had taken a decision.

  ‘All right, then, autumn it is. Better late than never,’ he said. ‘But the strike in three weeks. We’re counting on you.’

  ‘What else can you do?’ Thrush answered casually over his shoulder. ‘That’s all, samurai, this is the parting of the ways. Hop it back to your ever-loving Japanese mother.’

  ‘I’m an orphan,’ said Vasilii Alexandrovich, smiling with just his lips, and he thought once again how good it would be to break this man’s neck – in order to watch his eyes bulge and turn glassy just before he died.

  At that moment the silence ended.

  ‘Mr Engineer, it looks like that’s all. They’ve finished,’ Smurov whispered.

  Fandorin could see for himself that the loading had been completed. The barge had settled almost right down to the waterline. It might look small, but apparently it was capacious – it took a lot of space to accommodate a thousand crates of weapons.

  There was the last man clambering up the gangway – from the way he was walking, his load was not heavy at all, and then seven, no eight, hand-rolled cigarettes were lit on the barge, one after another.

  ‘They’ve done a bit of moonlighting. Now they’ll have a smoke and sail away,’ the agent breathed in his ear.

  Kroshkin ran off to get help at a quarter to three, the engineer calculated. Let’s assume he got to a phone at three. It would take him five minutes, maybe ten, to get Danilov or the duty officer to understand what was going on. Agh, I should have sent Smurov, he’s better with words. So we’ll assume they get the watch out at ten minutes, no, a quarter, past three. They won’t set out before half past three. And it takes at least half an hour to get from Kalanchovka Street to the Kozhukhovo Bridge on a handcar. No point in expecting the gendarmes any earlier than four. And it’s three twenty-five …

  ‘Get your gun out,’ Fandorin ordered, taking his Browning in his left hand and Kroshkin’s Nagant in his right. ‘On the count of four, fire in the direction of the barge.’

  ‘What for?’ asked Smurov, startled. ‘Look how many of them there are! And how can they get off the river anyway? When help arrives, we’ll overtake them on the bank!’

  ‘How do you know they won’t sail the barge out of the city, where there are no people, or transfer the weapons to carts before it gets light? No, they have to b-be arrested. How many cartridges do you have?’

  ‘Seven in the cylinder and seven spares, that’s all. We’re secret policemen, not some kind of Bashibazouks …’

  ‘Kroshkin had fourteen as well. I have only seven, I don’t carry a spare clip. Unfortunately, I’m no janissary either. Thirty-five shots – that’s not many for half an hour. But there’s nothing to be done about it. This is what we do. You loose off the first cylinder without a pause, to produce an impression. But after that use the bullets sparingly, make every one count.’

  ‘It’s a bit far,’ said Smurov, judging the distance. ‘They’re half hidden by the side of the barge. It’s hard enough to hit a half-length figure from this far away, even during the day.’

  ‘Don’t aim at the men – they are your own compatriots, after all. Fire to prevent anyone getting across from the barge on to the tug. Ready, three, four!’

  Erast Petrovich pointed his pistol up into the air (with its short barrel, it was almost useless at that distance, anyway) and pressed the trigger seven times.

  ‘Well, how about that,’ drawled Thrush when he heard the rapid firing.

  He stuck his head out of the door cautiously. So did Rybnikov.

  The flashes of shots glinted above a heap of rails dumped about fifty paces from the wharf.

  The response from the barge was erratic shooting from eight barrels.

  ‘Narks. They’ve tracked us down,’ Thrush said coolly, summing up the situation. ‘But there are only a few of them. Three or four at the most. It’s a snag, but we’ll soon fix it. I’ll shout and tell the lads to outflank them from both sides …’

  ‘Wait!’ said Vasilii Alexandrovich, grabbing him by the shoulder and speaking very rapidly. ‘You mustn’t get drawn into a battle. That’s what they want you to do. There aren’t many of them, but they must have sent for support. It’s not hard to intercept a barge on the river. Tell me, is there anyone on the tug?’

  ‘No, they were all on loading.’

  ‘The police only got here recently,’ Rybnikov said confidently. ‘Otherwise there’d be an entire company of gendarmes here already. That means they didn’t see the loading of the main barge; we’ve spent almost an hour loading the one for Sormovo. Listen here, Thrush. The Sormovo load can be sacrificed. Save the big barge. Leave, and you can come back again tomorrow. Go, go. I’ll lead the police away.’

  He took the coil of red cable from the SR, stuffed it into his pocket and ran out into the open, zigzagging from side to side.

  The black silhouettes on the barge disappeared as if by magic, along with the scarlet sparks of light. But a second later the white flashes of shots glinted above the side of the vessel.

  Another figure dashed from the warehouse to the barge, weaving and dodging – the engineer watched its movement with especial interest.

  At first the bullets whistled high over their heads, but then the revolutionaries found their range and the little lumps of lead ricocheted off the rails, with a nauseating whine and a scattering of sparks.

  ‘Oh Lord, death’s come for me!’ gasped Smurov, ducking right down beh
ind the stack every now and then.

  Fandorin kept his eyes fixed on the barge, ready to fire as soon as anyone tried to slip across to the tug.

  ‘Then don’t be shy,’ said the engineer. ‘Why be afraid? All those people waiting for you and me in the next world. They’ll greet you like a long-lost friend. And such people, too. Not the kind we have nowadays.’

  Amazingly enough, the argument advanced by Fandorin worked.

  The police agent raised his head a little.

  ‘And Napoleon’s waiting too?’

  ‘Napoleon too. Do you like Napoleon?’ the engineer murmured absentmindedly, screwing up his left eye. One of the revolutionaries, more quick-witted than the others, had decided to clamber from the barge on to the tug.

  Erast Petrovich planted a bullet in the cladding, right in front of the bright spark’s nose. The man ducked back down into shelter behind the barge’s side.

  ‘Keep your eyes open and your wits about you,’ Fandorin told his partner. ‘Now they’ve realised it’s time for them to leave, they’ll creep across one at a time. Don’t let them, fire across their path.’

  Smurov didn’t answer.

  The engineer glanced at him quickly and swore.

  The police agent was slumped with his cheek against the rails, the hair on the back of his head was soaked in blood, and one open eye was staring, mesmerised, off to the side. He was dead …

  I wonder if he’ll meet Napoleon? Fandorin thought fleetingly. Just at that moment he could not afford to indulge in sentimentality.

  ‘Comrade helmsman, into the wheelhouse!’ a voice yelled out loud and clear on the barge. ‘Quickly now!’

  The figure that had hidden at the bow of the barge started climbing into the tug again. Fandorin heaved a sigh and fired to kill. The body fell into the water with a splash.

  Almost immediately another man tried, but he was clearly visible against the white deck housing and Erast Petrovich was able to hit him in the leg. In any case, the shot man started roaring, so he must still be alive.