The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

Erast Petrovich barely even glanced at the table when the dice were cast for the second time. Once again the blue die was slower to settle than the red one.

  The spectators shed their reserve and the air rang with exclamations.

  ‘They are saying: “The blue die has fallen in love with the gaijin!” Shirota, red-faced now, shouted in the titular counsellor’s ear and started raking the heap of white and yellow coins towards him.

  ‘Madam, there is your father’s money,’ said Fandorin, setting aside the heap of money lost by the owner in the previous game.

  ‘Damare!’ the hunchback roared at the spectators.

  He looked terrifying. His eyes were bloodshot, his Adam’s apple was trembling, his humped chest was heaving.

  The servant girl dragged a jangling sack across the floor. The owner untied the laces with trembling hands and began quickly setting out little columns on the table, each column containing ten coins.

  He’s going to try to win it all back, Erast Petrovich realised, and suppressed a yawn.

  One of the bruisers guarding the door finally succumbed and set off towards the table, which was almost completely covered with little silver columns that gleamed dully.

  This time the hunchback shook the little cup for at least a minute before he could bring himself to throw. Everyone watched his hands, mesmerised. Only Fandorin, firmly convinced of the immutability of his gambler’s luck, was gazing around curiously.

  And that was why he saw the chubby-faced Japanese edging slyly towards the door. Why was he being so furtive? Had he not settled his bill? Or had he filched something?

  The dice struck against the wood and everyone leaned down over the table, shouldering each other aside, but Fandorin was observing the young moon-faced youth.

  His behaviour was quite astonishing. Once he had backed away as far as the guard, who was totally absorbed in the game, even though he had remained at the door, Moon-face struck the guard on the neck with his open hand in a fantastically rapid movement. The big brute collapsed on to the floor without a sound and the sneak thief (if he was a thief) was away and gone: he slid the bolt open soundlessly and slipped outside.

  Erast Petrovich merely shook his head, impressed by such adroitness, and turned back to the table. What had he staked his money on? Evens, wasn’t it?

  The little red cube had stopped on 2, the blue one was still rolling. A second later a dozen throats let out a roar so loud that the titular counsellor was deafened.

  Shirota hammered his superior on the back, shouting something inarticulate. Sophia Diogenovna gazed at Fandorin through eyes radiant with happiness.

  The blue die was lying there, displaying six large black dots.

  Oh why does it love

  Only the indifferent,

  The fleet tumbling die?

  THE FLAG OF A GREAT POWER

  Pushing his way through the others, Shirota started scooping the silver back into the sack. The room was filled with a melancholy jingling sound, but the music did not continue for long.

  A loud, furious bellow issued simultaneously from several throats and a rabble of most daunting-looking natives came bursting into the room.

  The first to run in was a moustachioed, hook-nosed fellow with his teeth bared in a ferocious grin and a long bamboo pole in his hands. Another two flew in behind him, bumping their shoulders together in the doorway – one slicing an iron chain through the air with a whistle, the other holding an odd-looking contrivance: a short wooden rod attached to a cord with an identical wooden rod at the other end. Tumbling in after them came a hulk of such immense height and stature that in Moscow he would have been shown at a fairground – Erast Petrovich had not even suspected that there were specimens like this to be found among the puny Japanese nation. Rolling in last of all came the titch who had recently gone out, so his strange behaviour was finally explained.

  Two gangs arguing with each other over something, Erast Petrovich realised. Exactly the same as at home. Only our cut-throats don’t take off their shoes.

  This final observation was occasioned by the fact that, before the attackers stepped on to the rice-straw mats, they kicked off their wooden sandals. And then there was a kind of brawl that Fandorin had never seen before, although, despite his young age, the titular counsellor had already been involved in several bloody altercations.

  In this unpleasant situation, Erast Petrovich acted rationally and coolly: he caught Sophia Diogenovna as she swooned in horror, dragged her into the farthest corner and shielded her with his body. Shirota was there beside him in an instant, repeating an unfamiliar word in a panicky voice: ‘Yakuza, Yakuza!’

  ‘What’s that you’re saying?’ Fandorin asked him as he watched the battle develop.

  ‘Bandits! I warned you! There’s going to be an Incident! Ah, this is an Incident!’

  And the clerk was quite right about that – a most serious incident was shaping up.

  The gamblers and idle onlookers scattered in all directions. First they pressed themselves back against the wall and then, taking advantage of the absence of any guards on the door, they ran for it. Fandorin could not follow their sensible example – he could not abandon the young lady, and the disciplined Shirota clearly had no intention of abandoning his superior. The clerk even attempted, in turn, to shield the diplomat with his own body, but Erast Petrovich moved the Japanese aside – he was blocking his view.

  The young man was rapidly seized by the excitement that seizes any individual of the male sex at the sight of an affray, even if it has nothing to do with him and he is an altogether peaceable individual. The breathing quickens, the blood flows twice as fast, the hands fold themselves into fists and, in defiance of reason, in defiance of the instinct of self-preservation, the desire arises to dash headlong into the free-for-all, doling out blind, fervent blows to left and right.

  In this fight, however, almost no blind blows were struck. Perhaps even none at all. The fighters did not bawl out profanities, they only grunted and screeched furiously.

  The attackers’ leader seemed to be the man with the moustache. He was the first to throw himself into the fray and smack the surviving doorman very deftly across the ear with the end of his pole – apparently only lightly, but the man fell flat on his back and did not get up again. The pair who had followed the man with the moustache started lashing out, one with his chain and the other with his piece of wood, and they laid out the three guards in white bandanas.

  But that was not the end of the battle – far from it.

  Unlike the frenetic fellow with the moustache, the hunchback did not go looking for trouble. He stayed behind his men, shouting out instructions. New warriors came dashing out from back rooms somewhere, and the attackers also started taking punishment.

  The hunchback’s fighters were armed with long daggers (or perhaps short swords; Erast Petrovich would have found it hard to give a precise definition of those blades fifteen to twenty inches long) and they handled their weapons rather deftly. One might have expected a bamboo pole and a short wooden rod, or the bare hands with which the giant and the titch fought, to be useless against steel, but nonetheless, the scales were clearly not tipping in the ‘Rakuen’s’ favour.

  Chubby Face struck out with his feet as well as his hands, managing to hit one man on the forehead and another on the chin. His elephantine comrade acted more majestically and simply: with a nimbleness that was quite incredible for such vast dimensions, he grabbed an opponent by the wrist of the hand clutching a dagger and jerked, flinging him first to the floor and then against the wall. His massive ham-like hands, completely covered with red tattoos, possessed a truly superhuman strength.

  The only persons present to remain indifferent to the battle were the spinster Blagolepova, still in a swoon, and the opium addicts in their state of bliss, even though every now and then the blood from some severed artery splashed as far as the mattresses. Once the latest victim of the mountainous man-thrower crashed down on to a dozing Chinaman, but the
temporary resident of paradisiacal pastures merely smiled dreamily.

  The white bandanas backed towards the counter, losing warriors on the way: some lay with their heads split open, some groaned as they clutched a broken arm. But the raiders suffered losses too: the virtuoso master of the wooden rod impaled his chest on a sharp blade; the chain-bearer fell, skewered from both sides. The chubby-faced prancer was still alive, but he had taken a heavy blow to the temple from a sword-hilt and was sitting on the floor, doltishly wagging his half-shaved head.

  But now the hunchback was squeezed into a corner and his two most dangerous enemies – the tattooed giant and the man with the moustache under a hook-nose – were advancing on him.

  The owner pressed his hump against the counter, flipped over with amazing agility and ended up on the other side. But that was hardly likely to save him.

  The raiders’ leader stepped forward and started twirling his weapon through the air in a whistling figure of eight, just barely touching it with his fingertips.

  The hunchback raised his hand. And a six-chamber revolver glinted in it.

  ‘And about time too,’ Erast Petrovich remarked to his assistant. ‘He c-could have thought of that a bit sooner.’

  The face of the bandit with the moustache was suddenly a mask of amazement, as if he had never even seen a firearm before. The hand holding the pole whirled upwards, but the shot rang out too quickly. The bullet struck the bandit on the bridge of the nose and knocked him off his feet. Blood oozed out of the black hole slowly and reluctantly. The dead man’s face was still frozen in an expression of bewilderment.

  The last remaining raider was also dumbfounded. His plump lower lip drooped and his narrow eyes started blinking rapidly in their cushions of fat.

  The hunchback shouted out some kind of order. One of the guards got up off the floor, swaying on his feet. Then a second, and a third, and a fourth.

  They took a firm grip of the giant’s arms, but he gave a light, almost casual shrug, and the white bandanas went flying off and away. Then the owner of the dive calmly discharged the other five cartridges into the hulk’s chest. The huge man only jerked as the bullets ripped into his massive body. He swayed for a moment or two, wreathed in powder smoke, and sat down on the straw mats.

  ‘At least half a dozen c-corpses,’ said Erast Petrovich, summing up the outcome of the fight. ‘We have to call the police.’

  ‘We have to get away as quickly as possible!’ protested Shirota. ‘What a terrible Incident! The Russian vice-consul at the scene of a bandit massacre. Ah, what a blackguard that man Semushi is.’

  ‘Why?’ Fandorin asked in amazement. ‘After all, he was defending his own life and his establishment. They would have killed him otherwise.’

  ‘You do not understand. Genuine Yakuza will have nothing to do with gunpowder! They kill only with cold steel or their bare hands! What a disgrace! What is Japan coming to! Let’s go!’

  Roused by the shots, Sophia Diogenovna sat up and pulled in her feet. The clerk helped her to get up and pulled her towards the exit.

  The consular functionary followed but he kept looking around. He saw the guards dragging the dead behind the counter, carrying and leading away the wounded. They pinned the stunned titch’s arms behind his back and emptied a jar of water over him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Shirota called from the doorway. ‘Hurry!’

  ‘Wait for me outside. I’ll just c-collect my winnings.’

  But the titular counsellor did not move towards the table where the silver was lying in a blood-spattered heap, he moved towards the counter – the owner was standing there and the Yakuza who had been seized had been dragged across to him.

  The hunchback asked him something. Instead of replying, the titch tried to kick him in the crotch, but the blow was feeble and poorly directed – the prisoner had obviously not yet recovered his wits fully. The owner hissed viciously and started kicking the short, sturdy youth – in the stomach, on the knees, on the ankles.

  The titch didn’t make a sound.

  Wiping the sweat off his forehead, the hunchback asked another question.

  ‘He wants to know if there is anyone else left in the Chobei-gumi,’ a voice whispered in Erast Petrovich’s ear.

  It was Shirota. He had led Sophia Diogenovna outside and come back – he took his responsibilities very seriously.

  ‘Left where?’

  ‘In the gang. But the Yakuza won’t tell him, of course. They’ll kill him now. Let us leave this place. The police will be here soon, they must have been informed already.’

  Three men in white bandanas grunted as they dragged the dead man-mountain across the floor. The mighty arms flopped about helplessly. The tips of both little fingers were missing.

  The servant girl busily sprinkled white powder on the straw mats and immediately wiped them with a rag, and the red blotches disappeared as if by magic. Meanwhile the owner put a thin cord round the prisoner’s neck and pulled the noose tight. He tugged and tugged, and when the Yakuza’s face was suffused with blood, he asked the same question again.

  The titch lashed out despairingly at his tormentor with his foot once again, but once again to no avail.

  Then the hunchback evidently decided that there was no point in wasting any more time. His flat face spread into a grim smile and his right hand started slowly winding the cord on to his left wrist. The captive started wheezing, his lips started clutching vainly at the air, his eyes bulged out of their sockets.

  ‘Right then, translate!’ Fandorin ordered the clerk. ‘I am a representative of the consular authority of the city of Yokohama, which is under the jurisdiction of the great powers. I demand that you put an end to this summary execution immediately.’

  Shirota translated, but what came out was much longer than what Fandorin had said, and at the end he performed a weird trick: he took out of his pocket two little flags, Russian and Japanese (the same ones that Erast Petrovich had recently seen on his desk), and performed a strange manipulation with them – he raised the red, white and blue tricolour high in the air and leaned the red and white flag over sideways.

  ‘What was that you showed them?’ the puzzled vice-consul asked.

  ‘I translated what you said and added on my own behalf that if he kills the bandit, he will have to kill you as well, and then our emperor will have to apologise to the Russian emperor, and that will bring terrible shame on Japan.’

  Erast Petrovich was astounded that such an argument could have any effect on the owner of a bandit den. Japanese cut-throats were clearly different from Russian ones after all.

  ‘But the flags? Do you always carry them with you?’

  Shirota nodded solemnly.

  ‘I always have to remember that I serve Russia, but at the same time remain a Japanese subject. And then, they are so beautiful!’

  He bowed respectfully, first to the Russian flag, then to the Japanese one.

  After a moment’s thought, Erast Petrovich did the same, only he began with the flag of the Land of the Rising Sun.

  Meanwhile there was strange, bustling activity taking place in the room. They took the noose off the captive Yakuza’s neck, but for some reason laid him out on the floor, and four guards sat on his arms and legs. From the evil grin on the hunchback’s face, it was clear that he had thought up some new infamy.

  Two male servants came running into the room – one was holding a bizarre-looking piece of metal, and the other a small chalice of black ink.

  The half-pint started squirming with every part of his body, he shuddered and howled in misery. Erast Petrovich was astounded – after all, this man had just demonstrated absolute fearlessness in the face of imminent death!

  ‘What’s happening? What are they about to do to him? Tell them I won’t allow them to torture him!’

  ‘They are not going to torture him,’ the clerk said sombrely. ‘The owner of the establishment intends to tattoo the hieroglyph ura on his forehead. It means “traitor”. It is
the mark used by Yakuza to brand renegades who have committed the worst of all crimes – betraying their own. For this they deserve death. A man cannot possibly live with this brand, and he cannot commit suicide either, because his body will be buried in the slaughterhouse quarter. What appalling villainy! No, Japan is not what she used to be. The honest bandits of former times would never have done anything so vile.’

  ‘Then we must stop this!’ Fandorin exclaimed.

  ‘Semushi will not back down, or he will lose face in front of his men. And we cannot force him. This is an internal Japanese matter, it lies beyond consular jurisdiction.’

  The owner seated himself on the prostrate man’s chest, set his head in a wooden vice and dipped the piece of metal into the inkwell – and it became clear that the face of the elaborate contrivance was covered with little needles.

  ‘Villainy always falls within jurisdiction,’ Erast Petrovich said with a shrug, stepping forward and seizing the owner by the shoulder.

  He nodded at the heap of silver, pointed at the prisoner and said in English:

  ‘All this against him. Stake?’

  The hunchback visibly wavered. Shirota also took a step forward, stood shoulder to shoulder with Fandorin and lifted up the Russian flag, making it clear that the entire might of a great empire stood behind the vice-consul’s suggestion.

  ‘OK. Stake,’ the owner agreed in a hoarse voice, getting up.

  He snapped his fingers, and the bamboo cup and dice were handed to him with a bow.

  Would that you always

  inspired only true respect,

  my own country’s flag!

  A COBBLED STREET RUNNING DOWN A HILL

  They did not linger in the vicinity of the ‘Rakuen’. Without a word being spoken, they immediately turned the corner and strode off at a smart pace. Certainly, Shirota tried to assure Fandorin that the hunchback would not dare to pursue them, because taking back someone’s winnings was not the Bakuto custom, but he himself did not appear entirely convinced of the inviolability of bandit traditions and kept looking round. The clerk was lugging the sack of silver. Erast Petrovich was leading the young lady along by the elbow and the Yakuza who had been beaten at dice was plodding along behind, still seeming not quite to have recovered from all his ordeals and so many twists of fate.