Boris Akunin - The Coronation

There was an abrupt sound like someone chopping a log of firewood with an axe and Masa pushed me forward: time to go.

We hurried across the empty space and ran down the slope. Fandorin was bending over, examining the door in the gates. A tousle-headed young man was sitting beside him with his back to the wall and his eyes rolled up, opening and closing his mouth like a fish that has been lifted out of the water.

‘A cunning d-door,’ Erast Petrovich said apprehensively. ‘You see that wire? It’s just like in a good shop – when you walk in, the bell rings. But we are modest unassuming individuals, arewe not? We’ll just cut the wire with a knife, like so. Why distract people from their conversation? Especially since it appears that Mr Stump has already arrived or, as they like to say in this beau monde, “rolled up”.’

I could not understandwhy Fandorinwas so very cheerful. My teethwere chattering in excitement (I hope that itwas excitement and not fear), but he was almost rubbing his hands in glee and in general behaving as if we were engaged in some enjoyable, if not entirely decent, form of recreation. I recalled that Endlung had behaved in the same way before he took Pavel Georgievich to some disreputable spot. I have heard that there are people for whom danger is what wine is to a drunkard or opium to the hopeless addict. Evidently the former state counsellor belonged to this class of people. In any case, that would explain a lot about the way he behaved and the things that he did.

Fandorin pushed the door gently, and it opened without a squeak – the hinges must have been well oiled.

I saw a sloping floor illuminated by the crimson reflections of flames. Somewhere down below there was a fire or torches were burning.

We walked down a rather narrow passage for about twenty steps and then Fandorin, who was at the front, flung out his hand. We heard voices echoing hollowly under stone vaults. My eyes grew slightly accustomed to the gloom, and I saw that the passage was formed by two rows of old oak barrels that were half-rotten from age and the damp air.

Erast Petrovich suddenly crouched over and slipped into a gap between the barrels. We followed him.

It turned out that the hugewooden containerswere not standing right up against each other, and the gaps between them formed a kind of a maze. We crept soundlessly along this winding path, maintaining our direction from the flickers of light on the ceiling and the sound of voices that became ever more audible, so that I could already make out individual words, although I did not always understand their meaning.

‘. . . Tomorrow I’ll drill a hole in your bonce if you yap. When I whistle, that’s when you can start crowing.’

Erast Petrovich turned into a narrow opening and stopped moving. Peeping over his shoulder I saw a bizarre and sinister scene.

There was a planking table standing in the middle of a rather wide space, surrounded on all sides by rows of dark barrels. Standing around itwere several iron tripods with burning torches thrust into them. The flames fluttered and crackled and thin plumes of black smoke rose up to the vaulted ceiling.

There were six men sitting at the table, one at the head and five along the other three sides. I could make out the leader better than the others because he was facing in our direction. I saw a coarse, powerful face with a prominent forehead, sharp folds alongside the mouth and a lower jaw that broadened towards the bottom, but it was not the face that caught my attention, itwas the leader’s right arm, lying on the table. Instead of a hand it had a three-pronged fork!

Stump – for there could be be no doubt it was he – thrust his incredible hand into a dish standing in front of him, pulled out a piece of meat and dispatched it into his mouth.

‘No one’s doing no crowing,’ said one of the men siting with his back to us. ‘Are we dumb clucks or what? But at least give us something to be getting on with. What’s the deal? What are we dossing about like this for? I’ve done enough polishing the seat of my pants. Don’t drink any wine, don’t deal any cards. We’re bored to death.’

The others began fidgeting and muttering, demonstrating their clear agreement with the speaker.

Stump carried on chewing unhurriedly, looking at them with his deep-set eyes drowned in the shadows under his heavy brow– I could only see the sparks glittering in them. He allowed his comrades to make their din for a while, then suddenly swung his hand and struck the dish hard with his fork. There was a crack, and the stout clay vessel split in two. Immediately it all went quiet.

‘I’ll give you wine and cards,’ the leader drawled in a low, quiet voice and spat out his half-chewed scrap of meat to one side. ‘The deal here is the once-in-a-lifetime kind, and not in every life either. A big man has put his trust in us. And if any louse here messes it up for me, I’ll hook his chitterlings out with this here fork and make him eat them.’

He paused, and from the motionless figures of the bandits I realised that the threat he had just made was no mere figure of speech but a perfectly literal promise. I felt the goose pimples rising all over my body.

‘No need to frighten us, Stump,’ said the same bandit, obviously the most reckless desperado in the gang. ‘You lay it out straight and clear. Why treat us like lousy mongrels? We’ve hung around on look-out a couple of times and tailed a couple of gulls. What kind of deal is that? We’re wolves, not miserable dogs.’

‘That’s for me to know,’ the head bandit snapped. ‘And you’ll chirp the way I tell you to.’ He leaned forward. ‘This shindy’s the kind it’s best for you not to know about, Axe, you’ll sleep better for it. And what they called us in for is still to come. We’ll show what we can do. And I tell you what, brothers. Once the job’s done, we’ll cut and run.’

‘Out of Khitrovka?’ someone asked. ‘Or out of town?’

‘Eejit! Out of Roossia!’ Stump snapped impressively.

‘What d’you mean, out of Roossia?’ objected the one he had called Axe. ‘Where are we gonna live? Turkishland, is it? I don’t speak their lingo.’

Stump grinned, baring a mouthful of jagged, chipped teeth.

‘That’s all right. Axe, with the loot you’ll have, the Muslims’ll start chatting your lingo. Believe me, brothers, Stump doesn’t make idle talk. We’ll all get so well greased up from this job, every one of you will stay greased all the way to the grave.’

‘But won’t this big man of yours spin us off?’ the same sceptic asked doubtfully.

‘He’s not that kind. The most honest top man in the whole wide world. Compared to him our King is a louse.’

‘What sort of man is he then? A real eagle, I suppose?’

I noticed that Fandorin tensed up as he waited for the bandit boss’s answer.

Stump clearly found the question rather embarrassing. He picked his teeth with his fork as if he was wondering whether to say anything or not. But eventually he decided to answer.

‘I won’t try to bamboozle you. I don’t know. He’s the kind of man who’s not that easy to get close to. His toffs rolled up with him – real eagles they are, you’re no match for them . . . This man doesn’t speak our lingo. I’ve seen him once. In a basement like ours, only smaller and with no light. I tell you, he’s a serious man and what he says, he means. He sat there in the dark, so I couldn’t see his face. Whispered to his interpreter, and he told me everything in our lingo. Our King likes to bawl and shout, but this here is Europe. You can hear a whisper better than a shout.’

Even though this remark came from the lips of an out-andout criminal, I was struck by its psychological precision. It really is true that the less a person raises his voice, the more he is listened to and the better he is heard. The late sovereign never shouted at anyone. And the procurator of the Holy Synod, the all-powerful Konstantin Petrovich, speaks in a quiet murmur too. Why, take even Fandorin – so very quiet, but when he starts to speak, the members of the royal family hang on every word.