by Boris Akunin
‘No,’ replied Fandorin, who was listening intently. ‘But do carry on. Only please, m-move from the philosophy to the facts.’
‘Very well, let it be the facts. I don’t think I need to go into the details of the operation – you already have a good grasp of that. I employed the help of the Satsuman fanatics and several highly placed officials who see the future of Japan in the same way as I do. I feel sorry for Suga. He was an outstanding man and would have gone far. But I bear no grudge against you – you have given me Shirota instead. For the Russians he was a lowly native clerk, but from this seed I shall grow a remarkable sunflower, just you wait and see. And perhaps you and he will make peace with each other yet. Three friends like you, me and him are a great force.’
‘Three friends?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, clutching the armrests of his chair with his fingers. ‘I had three friends. You killed them all.’
The Don was disconcerted by that and his face fell.
‘Yes, that was most unfortunate … I didn’t order them to be killed. I only wanted to take back what should not have fallen into the wrong hands. It is my fault, of course. But only in the sense that I didn’t forbid them to be killed, and as far as the Stealthy Ones are concerned, the less bother, the better. I forbade them to touch you, because you are my friend. That’s why they killed the little prince, but not you.’
The titular counsellor shuddered. That sounded like the truth. Tsurumaki had not wanted him dead? But if that was the case, the entire pattern he had figured out was shot to hell!
Erast Petrovich wrinkled up his forehead and immediately restored the sequence of logic:
‘Right. You decided to get rid of me later, when I told you what Onokoji said before he died.’
‘Nothing of the kind!’ Tsurumaki exclaimed resentfully. ‘I arranged everything in the best possible manner. I made Bullcox give me his word, and he kept his promise, because he is a gentleman. He satisfied his vanity, cut a dash, humiliated you in public, but he didn’t maim you or kill you.’
‘But surely … surely the stroke was not staged?’
‘Why, did you think he was struck down by lightning from heaven? Bullcox is an ambitious man. What would he want with the scandal of a killing? But this way he saved his honour and did no damage to his career.’
The pattern had collapsed anyway. No one had intended to kill Erast Petrovich, and his lucky star apparently had nothing to do with anything!
This news made a profound impression on the titular counsellor, but even so he did not allow himself to be put off his stride.
‘But how did you find out that my friends and I had evidence that was dangerous for you?’
‘Tamba told me.’
‘Who t-told you?’
‘Tamba,’ Tsurumaki explained matter-of-factly. ‘The head of the Momochi clan.’
Fandorin was totally bemused now.
‘Are you talking about the ninja? But as far as I’m aware, Momochi Tamba lived hundreds of years ago!’
‘The present Tamba is his successor. Tamba the Eleventh. Only don’t ask me how he knew about your plan – I have no idea. Tamba never reveals his secrets.’
‘What does this man look like?’ Erast Petrovich asked, unable to control a nervous tremor.
‘It’s hard to describe him, he changes his appearance. But basically Tamba is short, less than five feet tall, but he can make himself taller, they have some kind of cunning devices for that. Old, skinny … What else? Ah, yes, the eyes. He has absolutely special eyes that are impossible to hide. When he looks at you, they seem to burn right through you. It’s best not to look into them – he’ll put a spell on you.’
‘Yes, that’s him!’ Fandorin exclaimed. ‘I knew it! Tell me more! Have you been dealing with the ninja for a long time?’
The Don paused, gazing at the other man quizzically.
‘Not very long. I was put in contact with them by an old samurai, now deceased. He used to serve the princes Onokoji … The Momochi clan is a very valuable ally, they are capable of working genuine miracles. But they are dangerous to deal with. You never know what is on their mind and what to expect from them. Tamba is the only man in the world I’m afraid of. Did you see how many guards I have in the house? But before, if you recall, I was perfectly happy to spend the night here alone.’
‘What happened between you? Did you not have enough money to pay him?’ Fandorin laughed mistrustfully, glancing at the safe packed with gold ingots.
‘That’s funny,’ Tsurumaki conceded dourly. ‘No, I always paid on time. I don’t understand what happened, and that’s what alarms me most of all. Tamba has started some game of his own, with goals that are not clear to me. And in some strange way that game is connected with you.’
‘With me? In what way?’
‘I don’t know in what way!’ the Don cried irritably. ‘They want something from you! Otherwise why would they have abducted your lover? That’s why I’m not handing you over to the police. You are the key to this plot. I just don’t know yet which way to turn you so that the box of secrets will open. And you don’t know either, do you?’
The expression on the titular counsellor’s face was more eloquent than any reply, and the disciple of Chaos nodded.
‘I can see that you don’t. Here is my hand, Fandorin. It is the custom for you Europeans to seal a bargain with a handshake, is it not?’
The millionaire’s short-fingered hand hung motionless in midair.
‘What b-bargain?’
‘An alliance. You and I against Tamba. The ninja abducted O-Yumi and killed your friends. I didn’t kill them – they did. We shall strike a pre-emptive blow against them. The best form of defence is attack. Come on, give me your hand! We have to trust each other!’
But the vice-consul still did not reach out in response.
‘What trust can there be if you are armed and I am not?’
‘Oh Lord! Take your little toy, I don’t want it.’
Once he had picked his Herstal up off the floor, Erast Petrovich finally believed that all this was not some subtle trap intended to worm something out of him.
‘What is this pre-emptive strike?’ he asked cautiously.
‘Tamba thinks that I don’t know where to look for him, but he is mistaken. My men, of course, are not shinobi, but they know a thing or two. I have managed to find out where the Momochi clan’s lair is located.’
Fandorin jerked up out of his chair.
‘Then why are we wasting time? Let’s get going straight away.’
‘It’s not that simple. The lair is hidden in the mountains. My spies know exactly where, but it is hard to reach it …’
‘Is it far from Yokohama?’
‘Not very. On the border of the Sagami and Kai provinces, close to Mount Oyama. Two days’ march from here – if you travel with baggage.’
‘What do we need baggage for? We can travel light and be there tomorrow!’
But Tsurumaki shook his head.
‘No, the baggage is essential, and quite heavy baggage too. The place is a genuine fortress.’
‘A f-fortress? The ninja have built a fortress close to the capital and no one knows about it?’
‘That is what our country is like. Densely populated plains along the sea, but move away from the coast, even slightly, and there are remote, uninhabited mountains. And Tamba’s fortress is not one that the chance traveller will notice …’
Erast Petrovich was sick to death of all these riddles.
‘You have many loyal men, these “Black Jackets” of yours. If you order them to, they will storm the place, even at the cost of their own lives, I have no doubt about that. So what do you need me for? Tell me the truth, or there will be no alliance.’
‘Yes, I will send Kamata there with a brigade of my best fighting men. They are all my comrades-in-arms from the civil war, I can rely on every one of them. But I myself cannot go with them – I have elections in three prefectures, that’s the most important thing for me at
the moment. Kamata is an experienced commander, an excellent soldier, but he only knows how to act according to the rules. He’s not much use in an unconventional situation. And, let me repeat once again, it is very difficult to get into Tamba’s secret village. Impossible in fact. There is no entrance.’
‘How can there be no entrance?’
‘There simply isn’t. That is what my spies have reported to me, and they are not given to fantasising. I need your brains, Fandorin. And your luck. You can be quite sure that is where O-Yumi has been taken, to the mountain fortress. On your own, without me, there is nothing you can do. You need me. But you will be useful to me too. Well then, do I have to hold my hand out in the air for much longer?’
After a second’s hesitation, the titular counsellor finally shook the outstretched hand. Two strong hands came together and squeezed each other so tight that the fingers turned white.
Stupid ritual
That refuses to die out:
Two hands tightly clasped
A DEAD TREE
Europe came to an end half an hour after they set out on their way. The spires and towers of the anglicised Bluff first gave way to the factory chimneys and cargo cranes of the river port, then to iron roofs, then to a sea of tiles, then to the thatched straw roofs of peasant huts, and after another mile or so, the buildings disappeared completely, leaving just the road stretching out between the rice fields, and bamboo groves, and the wall of low mountains that closed in the valley on both sides.
The expedition set off before dawn, in order not to attract unwanted attention. Strictly speaking, there was nothing suspicious about the caravan. It looked like a perfectly ordinary construction brigade, like the ones that built bridges and laid roads throughout the Mikado’s empire, which was striving eagerly to make the transition from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century.
The caravan was commanded by a sturdily built man with a coarse, wrinkled face. He stared around with the tenacious gaze of a bandit, which actually differs very little from the gaze of a construction foreman or master builder. His outfit – straw hat, black jacket, narrow trousers – was exactly the same as the workers wore, it was just that the commander rode and his thirty-two subordinates travelled on foot. Many of them were leading mules, loaded with heavy crates of equipment, by the bridle. Even the fact that the brigade was accompanied by a foreigner with his Japanese servant was unlikely to seem strange to anyone – there were many European and American engineers working on the immense building site that the Land of the Rising Sun had now become. If travellers coming the other way and peasants scrabbling in the meagre dirt watched the foreigner as he rode by, it was only because of the outlandish self-propelled kuruma on which he was riding.
Fandorin already regretted that he had not listened to the consul, who had advised him to hire a mule – the animals were slow and rather unattractive, but far more reliable than Japanese horses. However, Erast Petrovich had not wished to appear unattractive as he set out to save the woman he loved. He had taken a mule, but not to ride, only for his baggage, and had entrusted it to Masa’s care.
His servant tramped along behind him, leading the solid-hoofed creature on a rein and every now and then shouting at it: ‘Get arong’. The mule was walking along on its own in any case, but Masa had specially asked his master for the Russian words for urging on animals, in order to show off to the Black Jackets.
In everything apart from his choice of a means of transport, the titular counsellor had taken the advice of the experienced Vsevolod Vitalievich. His baggage consisted of a mosquito net (the mosquitoes in the Japanese mountains were genuine vampires); a rubber bath (skin diseases were widespread among the local inhabitants, so washing in the hotel bathrooms was a no-no); an inflatable pillow (the Japanese used wooden ones); baskets of food and lots of other essential items for a journey.
Communication with the commander of the brigade, Kamata, was established with some difficulty. He knew quite a lot of English words, but he had no concept of grammar, so without the habit of deductive reasoning, Fandorin probably would not have been able to understand him.
For instance, Kamata would say:
‘Hia furomu ibuningu tsu gou, naito hoteru supendo. Tsumorou mauntin entah.’
To start with, bearing in mind the peculiarities of the Japanese accent, Erast Petrovich restored the fragments of this gibberish to their original state. This gave him: ‘Here from evening to go, night hotel spend, tomorrow mountain enter’. After that, the meaning became clear: ‘We move on from here until the evening, spend the night in a hotel and tomorrow we enter the mountains’.
To reply he had to perform the reverse procedure: dismember the English sentence into its separate words and distort them in the Japanese style.
‘Mauntin, hau fah?’ the vice-consul asked. ‘Ninja bireju, hau fah?’
And Kamata understood perfectly. He thought for a moment and scratched his chin.
‘Smuuzu irebun ri. Mauntin faibu ri?’
It was eleven ri across the plain (about forty versts), and five ri through the mountains, Fandorin understood. So generally, although it wasn’t easy, they managed to make themselves understood to each other, and by midday the two of them had achieved such a close fit that they could even talk about complicated matters. For instance, about parliamentary democracy, of which Kamata was terribly fond. The empire had only just adopted a law on local government; elections for prefecture assemblies, mayors and village elders were taking place everywhere; and the Black Jackets were playing a very lively part in all this activity: they defended some candidates and also, as this advocate of parliamentarianism put it, ‘smorru furaiten’ others, that is, they frightened them a little. For Japan, all this was new, even revolutionary. And Don Tsurumaki seemed to be the first influential politician who had realised the full importance of the little provincial governments, which were regarded ironically in the capital as a useless decoration.
‘Ten eas, Tokyo nasingu,’ Kamata prophesied, swaying in the saddle. ‘Provinsu rearu pawa. Tsurumaki-dono rearu pawa. Nippon nou Tokyo, Nippon probinsu.’1 But Fandorin thought: The provinces are all very well, but by that time the Don will probably have control of the capital as well. And that will be the triumph of democracy.
The commander of the Black Jackets turned out to be quite a considerable chatterbox. As they moved along the valley, squeezed in tighter and tighter by the hills on both sides, he talked about the glorious days when he and the Don crushed the competition in the fight for lucrative contracts, and then came even jollier times – it was a period of revolt, and they fought and feasted ‘furu beri’, that is, with a full belly.
It was clear that the old bandit was in seventh heaven. Fighting was far better than working as a major-domo, he avowed. And a little later he added that it was even better than building a democratic Japan.
He really was a fine commander too. Every half-hour he rode round the caravan, checking to see whether the mules had gone lame or the baggage had come loose, joking with the fighting men, and the column immediately started moving more cheerfully and energetically.
To Fandorin’s surprise, they pressed on without a halt. He pushed his pedals economically, matching his speed to the men on foot, but after twenty versts he was starting to tire, while the Black Jackets were not showing any signs of fatigue.
Lunch lasted a quarter of an hour. Everyone, including Kamata, swallowed two rice balls, drank some water and then got back in formation. Erast Petrovich barely even had time to lay out the sandwiches prepared by the thoughtful Obayasi-san, and was obliged to chew them on the move, as he caught up with the brigade. Masa muttered as he dragged his Rosinante along behind.
Between four and five in the afternoon, having covered about thirty versts, they turned off the main road on to a narrow track. This was a completely wild area; at least, no European had ever set foot here before. Fandorin’s eye could not discern any signs of Western civilisation in the small, squalid villages. Little children and
adults with their mouths hanging open stared, not only at the tricycle, but also at the round-eyed man in outlandish clothes who was riding it. And this was only a few hours’ journey away from Yokohama! Only now did the titular counsellor start to realise how thin was the lacquer of civilisation with which the rulers had hastily coated the façade of the ancient empire.
Several times they came across cows – wearing colourful aprons with pictures of dragons on them and straw shoes over their hoofs. The villagers used these imposingly attired cud-chewers as pack and draught animals. The titular counsellor asked Kamata about this, and he confirmed his suspicion that the stupid peasants did not eat meat or drink milk, because they were still completely savage here, but never mind, democracy would come to them soon.
They stopped for the night in a rather large village at the very end of the valley, just before the mountains began. The village elder accommodated the ‘construction brigade’ in the communal house – ‘workers’ in the yard, ‘masters’ and ‘engineers’ inside. A straw-mat floor, no furniture, paper walls with holes in them. So this was the ‘hoteru’ Kamatu had mentioned that morning. The only other guest was an itinerant monk with a staff and a shoulder bag for alms, but he remained apart from their group and kept turning away – he didn’t want to defile his gaze with the sight of the ‘hairy barbarian’.
Fandorin got the idea of taking a stroll round the village, but the villagers behaved no better than the bonze – the children shouted and ran away, the women squealed, the dogs barked hysterically – and so he had to go back. The embarrassed elder came, bowed many times in apology and asked the gaijin-san not to go anywhere.
‘Furu pazanto nevah see uait man,’ Kamata translated. ‘Yu sakasu manki, sinku.’
