The Diamond Chariot

by Boris Akunin

  ‘Well, that’s not hard to clear up.’ The doctor took out a large magnifying glass and squatted down beside the chair. ‘Aha. The thumb of the right hand.’

  ‘You can tell that from a glance?’ asked Fandorin, astounded.

  ‘Yes, I’ve taken a bit of an interest. You see, my friend Henry Folds, who works in a hospital in Tokyo, made a curious discovery. While studying the prints left by fingers on old Japanese ceramics, he discovered that the pattern on the pads of the fingers is never repeated …’ Twigs walked over to the bed, took the dead man’s right hand and examined the thumb through the magnifying glass. ‘No, this is a quite different thumb. No doubt at all about it … And so Mr Folds proposed a curious hypothesis, according to which …’

  ‘I have read about fingerprints,’ Erast Petrovich interrupted impatiently, ‘but the European authorities do not see any practical application for the idea. Why don’t you check if it matches the spot with the mark that you spoke about?’

  The doctor unceremoniously raised the dead head with its top sawn off and doubled right over.

  ‘Yes, it probably does. But what of that? There was a touch, but there was no blow. Where the burn came from is not clear, but I assure you that no one has ever died from a cause like this.’

  Fandorin sighed and gave in. ‘Very well, stitch him up. I ought not to have bothered you.’

  While the doctor worked away with his needle, the titular counsellor went out into the next room. Sophia Diogenovna leaned eagerly towards him with an expression on her face as if she were expecting the miraculous news that her father was not dead at all, and the English doctor had just established the fact scientifically.

  Fandorin blushed and said:

  ‘We n-needed to establish the cause of death medically. It is routine.’

  The young lady nodded, and the hope faded from her face.

  ‘And what was the cause?’ enquired Shirota.

  Embarrassed, Erast Petrovich coughed into his hand and repeated the medical abracadabra that had stuck in his mind.

  ‘Prolapse of the biscuspid valve.’

  The clerk nodded respectfully, but Sophia Diogenovna started crying quietly and inconsolably, as if this news had finally laid her low.

  ‘And what am I to do now, Mr Vice-Consul?’ she asked, her voice breaking. ‘I feel afraid here. What if Semushi suddenly shows up, for the money? Is there any way I can spend the night at your office? I could manage somehow on the chairs, no?’

  ‘Very well, let’s go. We’ll think of something.’

  ‘I’ll just collect my things.’

  The young lady ran out of the room.

  Silence fell. The only sound was the doctor whistling as he worked. Then something clattered on the floor and Twigs swore: ‘Damned crown!’, from which Fandorin speculated that the Anglo-Saxon had dropped the top of the braincase.

  Erast Petrovich suddenly felt unwell and, in order not to hear anything else nasty, he started a conversation – he asked why Shirota had called the doctor ‘a sincere man’.

  The clerk was pleased at the question – he too seemed to find the silence oppressive, and he started telling the story with relish.

  ‘It is a very beautiful story, they even wanted to write a kabuki theatre play about it. It happened five years ago, when Twigs-sensei was still in mourning for his esteemed wife and his esteemed daughters were little girls. While playing the card game of bridge at the United Club, the sensei quarrelled with a certain bad man, a doerist. The doerist had arrived in Yokohama recently and started beating everyone at cards, and if anyone took offence, he challenged them to fight. He had already shot one man dead and seriously wounded another two. Nothing happened to the doerist for this, because it was a duel.’

  ‘Aha, a duellist!’ Fandorin exclaimed, after puzzling over the occasional alternating l’s and r’s in Shirota’s speech, which was absolutely correct in every other way.

  ‘Yes, yes, a doerist,’ Shirota repeated. ‘And so this bad man challenged the sensei to fight with guns. The doctor was in a dreadful situation. He did not know how to shoot at all, and the doerist would certainly have killed him, and his daughters would have been left orphans. But if the sensei refused to fight a duel, everyone would have turned their backs on him, and his daughters would have been ashamed of their father. But he did not want his daughters to feel ashamed. And then Mr Twigs said that he accepted the challenge, but he needed a delay of five days in order to prepare himself for death as befits a gentleman and a Christian. And he also demanded that the seconds must name the very longest distance that was permitted by the doering code – a full thirty paces. The doerist agreed contemptuously, but demanded in return that there must be no limit to the number of shots and the duel must continue until there was “a result”. He said he would not allow a duel of honour to be turned into a comedy. For five days the sensei saw no one. But at the appointed hour on the appointed day he came to the site of the duel. People who were there say he was a little pale, but very intense. The opponents were set thirty paces away from each other. The doctor removed his frock coat, and put cotton wool in his ears. And when the second waved the handkerchief, he raised his pistol, took careful aim and shot the doerist right in the centre of the forehead!’

  ‘That’s incredible!’ Erast Petrovich exclaimed. ‘What a stroke of luck! The Almighty certainly took mercy on Twigs!’

  ‘That was what everyone in the Settlement thought. But what had happened soon came to light. The manager of the shooting club revealed that Mr Twigs had spent all five days in the firing range. Instead of praying and writing a will, he learned how to fire a duelling pistol, at the precise distance of thirty paces. The sensei became a little deaf, but he learned to hit the centre of the target and never miss. And why not, he had fired thousands of rounds! Anyone in his place would have achieved the same result.’

  ‘Oh, well done!’

  ‘Some said what you say, but others were outraged and abused the doctor, saying it was not “fair play”. One young pup, a lieutenant in the French marines, got drunk and started mocking the doctor in public for cowardice. The sensei heaved a sigh and said: “You are very young and do not yet understand what responsibility is. But if you consider me a coward, I am willing to fight a duel with you on the same terms” – and as he spoke, he looked straight at the centre of the young pup’s forehead, so intently that the Frenchman sobered up completely and apologised. That is the kind of man that Dr Twigs is,’ Shirota concluded admiringly. ‘A sincere man!’

  ‘Like Pushkin and Field Marshal Saigo?’ Erast Petrovich asked, and couldn’t help smiling.

  The clerk nodded solemnly.

  It must be admitted that when the doctor emerged from the bedroom, even Fandorin saw him with different eyes. He noticed certain features of Twigs’ appearance that were not apparent at a casual glance: the firm line of the chin, the resolute, massive forehead. A very interesting specimen.

  ‘All patched and sewn up, looking fine,’ the doctor announced. ‘That will be a guinea and two shillings, Mr Fandorin. And another six pence for a place in the morgue. Ice is expensive in Yokohama.’

  When Shirota left to fetch a cart to transport the body, Twigs took hold of one of Erast Petrovich’s buttons with his finger and thumb and said with a mysterious air:

  ‘I was just thinking about that thumbprint and the little red spot … Tell me, Mr Vice-Consul, have you ever heard of the art of dim-mak?’

  ‘I b-beg your pardon?’

  ‘You have not,’ the doctor concluded. ‘And that is not surprising. Not much is known about dim-mak. Possibly it is all a load of cock and bull …’

  ‘But what is “dim-mak”?’

  ‘The Chinese art of deferred killing.’

  Erast Petrovich shuddered and looked hard at Twigs to see whether he was joking.

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I don’t know the details, but I have read that there are people who can kill and heal with a single touch. Supposedl
y they are able to concentrate a certain energy into some kind of ray and affect certain points of the body with it. You have heard of acupuncture?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  ‘Dim-mak would seem to operate with the same anatomical principles, but instead of a needle, it uses a simple touch. I have read that those who have mastered this mysterious art can cause a fit of sharp pain or, on the contrary, render a man completely insensitive to pain, or temporarily paralyse him, or put him to sleep, or kill him … And moreover, not necessarily at the moment of contact, but after a delay.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re talking about!’ exclaimed Fandorin, who was listening to the doctor with increasing bewilderment.

  ‘I don’t understand it myself. It sounds like a fairy tale … But I recalled a story I once read, about a master of dim-mak who struck himself on a certain point and fell down dead. He wasn’t breathing and his heart wasn’t beating. His enemies threw him to the dogs to be eaten, but after a while he woke up alive and well. And there’s another story I’ve read, about a certain Chinese ruler who was kissed on the foot by a beggar. Some time later a pink spot appeared at the sight of the kiss, and a few hours after that, the king suddenly fell down dead … Damn it!’ the doctor exclaimed in embarrassment. ‘I’m getting like those blockheaded journalists who make up all sorts of wild tales about the East. It’s just that while I was sewing our friend up, I kept thinking about the mark on his neck, so I remembered …’

  It was hard to imagine that a staid, sedate individual like Dr Twigs could have decided to play a hoax on anyone, but it was also hard for a convinced rationalist, such as Erast Petrovich considered himself to be, to believe in deferred killing.

  ‘Mm, yes,’ the titular counsellor said eventually. ‘In the East, of course, there are many phenomena still unstudied by European science …’

  And on that polite comment the mystical conversation came to an end.

  They said goodbye to Twigs in the street. The doctor got into a riksha, raised his hat and rode away. Two locals laid the poor captain’s body, wrapped in a sheet, on a cart.

  Erast Petrovich, Shirota and the sobbing Sophia Diogenovna set out on foot to the consulate, because Fandorin refused once again to ‘use human beings as horses’, and the clerk and the young lady also did not wish to ride in style, since the titular counsellor was travelling on his own two feet.

  At the very first street lamp, there was a surprise waiting for the vice-consul.

  The chubby-faced Yakuza, whom Erast Petrovich had already completely forgotten, loomed up out of the darkness.

  He froze in a low bow, with his arms pressed to his sides,. Then he straightened up and fixed his benefactor with a severe, unblinking gaze.

  ‘I hopped as far as the river,’ Shirota translated, gazing at the bandit with obvious approval. ‘What other orders will there be, Master?’

  ‘How sick I am of him!’ Fandorin complained. ‘Now I wish that they had put that brand on his forehead! Listen, Shirota, am I never going to get rid of him now?’

  The clerk looked carefully into the stubborn fellow’s eyes.

  ‘He is a man of his word. The only way is to tell him to put an end to his own life.’

  ‘Lord above! All right. At least get him to tell me what his n-name is.’

  Shirota translated the reply from the former soldier of the Chobei-gumi gang:

  ‘His name is Masahiro Sibata, but you can call him simply Masa.’

  Erast Petrovich glanced round at a squeak of wheels and doffed his top hat – it was the carters pushing along the cart on which the ‘perfectly healthy corpse’ had set off to the morgue after the doctor. Lying at its head were a pair of low boots and neatly folded clothing.

  Vain fuss all around,

  only he is at repose,

  who has joined Buddha

  SPARKS OF LIGHT ON A KATANA BLADE

  ‘Three samurai? Swords wrapped in rags. They called Okubo “a dog”? This could be very, very serious!’ Doronin said anxiously. ‘Everything about it is suspicious, and especially the fact that they used the launch. It’s the best way of getting right into the heart of the city, bypassing the road posts and the toll gates.’

  Erast Petrovich had caught Vsevolod Vitalievich at home, in the left wing of the consulate. Doronin had already returned from the opening of the charitable establishment and the supper that had followed it, and he was getting changed for the Bachelors’ Ball. The consul’s gold-embroidered uniform was hanging over a chair and a plump Japanese maid was helping him into his dinner jacket.

  Fandorin was very much taken by his superior’s apartment: with its furnishings of light rattan, it was very successful in combining Russianness with Japanese exoticism. For instance, on a small table in the corner there was a gleaming, fat-sided samovar, and through the glass doors of a cupboard, carafes of various colours could be seen, containing liqueurs and flavoured vodkas, but the pictures and scrolls on the walls were exclusively local in origin, and the place of honour was occupied by a stand with two samurai swords, while through an open door there was a view of an entirely Japanese room – that is, with no furniture at all and straw flooring.

  The hazy circumstances of Blagolepov’s death interested Vsevolod Vitalievich far less than his three nocturnal passengers. This reaction actually seemed rather extreme to Fandorin at first, but Doronin explained the reason for his alarm.

  ‘It is no secret that the minister has many enemies, especially among the southern samurai. In Japan attempts at political assassinations are almost as frequent as in Russia. At home, of course, the dignitaries are killed by revolutionaries, and here by reactionaries, but that makes little difference to the case – society and the state suffer equally serious damage from leftist zealots as from rightist ones. Okubo is a key figure in Japanese politics. If the fanatics can get to him, the entire direction, the entire orientation, of the empire will change, in a way that is highly dangerous for Russia. You see, Fandorin, Minister Okubo is a protagonist of evolution, the gradual development of the internal forces of the country under strict governmental control. He is an animal trainer who cracks his whip and does not allow the tiger to break out of its cage. The tiger is the ancestral, deep-rooted militancy of the aristocracy here, and the cage is the Japanese archipelago. What was it that tore the notorious triumvirate of the three Japanese Corsicans apart? The question of war. The mighty party that was led by our Shirota’s favourite hero, Marshal Saigo, wanted to conquer Korea immediately. The reason why Okubo gained the upper hand over all his opponents at that time was that he is cleverer and more cunning. But if he is killed, power will inevitably go to those who support rapid development based on expansion, the poets of the great Japanese Empire of Yamato. Although, God knows, there are already too many empires in the world – any minute now they will all start wrangling with each other and sinking their steel talons into each other’s fur …’

  ‘Wait,’ Fandorin said with a frown, holding open the leather-bound notebook intended for collecting information about Japan, but not yet writing anything in it. ‘What does that matter to Russia? If Japan does attack Korea, then what do we care?’

  ‘Tut-tut-tut, such puerile talk, and from a diplomat,’ the consul said reproachfully, and clicked his tongue. ‘Learn to think in terms of state policy, strategically. You and I have been an empire for a long time now, and everything that happens on the globe matters to empires, my dear. Especially in Korea. For the Japanese, the Korean Peninsula will be no more than a bridge to China and Manchuria, and we have had our own sights on those for a very long time. Have you never heard of the project to create Yellow Russia?’

  ‘I have, but I don’t like the idea. For goodness’ sake, Vsevolod Vitalievich, God grant us the grace to solve our own internal problems.’

  ‘He doesn’t like it!’ the consul chuckled. ‘Are you in the tsar’s service? Are you paid a salary? Then be so good as to do your job, and let those who have been entrusted with responsibility d
o the thinking and give the orders.’

  ‘But how is it possible not t-to think? You yourself do not greatly resemble a person who follows orders without thinking!’

  Doronin’s face hardened.

  ‘You are right about that. Naturally, I think, I have my own judgement, and as far as I can I try to bring it to the attention my superiors. Although, of course, sometimes, I’d like … But then, that does not concern you,’ said the consul, suddenly growing angry and jerking his hand so that his cufflink fell to the floor.

  The servant girl kneeled down, picked up the little circle of gold, took the consul’s arm and set his cuff to rights.

  ‘Domo, domo,’ Vsevolod Vitalievich thanked her, and the girl smiled, revealing crooked teeth that spoiled her pretty little face rather badly.

  ‘You should have a word with her, to get her to smile without parting her lips,’ Fandorin remarked in a low voice, unable to restrain his response.

  ‘The Japanese have different ideas about female beauty. We value large eyes, they value small ones. We value the shape of the teeth, they value only the colour. Irregularity of the teeth is a sign of sensuality, regarded as highly erotic. Like protruding ears. And the legs of Japanese beauties are best not mentioned at all. The habit of squatting on their haunches has made most women here bandy-legged and pigeon-toed. But there are gratifying exceptions,’ Doronin suddenly added in a completely different, affectionate tone of voice, looking over Erast Petrovich’s shoulder.

  Fandorin glanced round.

  A woman in an elegant white-and-grey kimono was standing in the doorway of the Japanese room. She was holding a tray with two cups on it. Fandorin thought her white-skinned, smiling face seemed exceptionally lovely.

  The woman walked into the drawing room, stepping soundlessly on small feet in white socks, and offered the guest tea.

  ‘And this is my Obayasi, who loves me according to a signed contract.’

  Erast Petrovich had the impression that the deliberate crudeness of these words was the result of embarrassment – Vsevolod Vitalievich was gazing at his concubine with an expression that was gentle, even sentimental.