Boris Akunin - The Coronation

But never mind the attendant at the window. The worst thing of all was that time was going to waste. None of the people who approached the little window presented treasury bills. No one loitered nearby for a suspiciously long time. I did not even notice something that Fandorin had warned me about: someone who left the hall and returned repeatedly.

As the end of the day approached, despair began to take a grip of me. Could Lind really have worked out our plan? Had everything gone wrong?

But at five minutes to nine, when the post office was already preparing to close, a portly sailor with a grey moustache wearing a dark-blue pea jacket and a cap with no cockade came striding in briskly through the doors. He was clearly a retired boatswain or pilot. Without bothering to look round, he walked straight across to the little window with the poste restante sign and rumbled in a voice rendered hoarse by drink: ‘There’s supposed to be a little letter here for me. For the bearer of a banknote with the number . . .’ He rummaged in his pocket for a while and took out a note, held it out as far as possible from his long-sighted eyes and read: ‘One three seven zero seven eight eight five nine. Got anything?’

I moved closer without making a sound, vainly struggling to control the trembling in my knees.

The post office attendant gaped at the sailor. ‘There hasn’t been any such letter,’ he said eventually after a lengthy pause. ‘Nothing of the kind has come in today.’

It hasn’t come in? I groaned inwardly. There where on earth had it got to? It looked as if I had just spent the best part of six hours hanging about here in vain!

The boatswain started grumbling too: ‘Oh that’s good, getting an old man running round the place, and all for nothing. Aaagh!’

He wiggled his thick eyebrows angrily, rubbed his sleeve over his luxurious moustache and walked towards the door.

Only one thing was clear – I had to follow him. There was no reason to stay in the post office any longer, and the working day was already over.

I slipped out into the street and followed the old man, maintaining a substantial distance. However, the sailor never looked round even once. He kept his hands in his pockets and walked as if he were in no hurry, waddling along but at the same time moving remarkably fast. I was barely able to keep up with him.

Absorbed in the chase, I did not remember at first that the plan had allocated a quite different role to me – that of decoy. I had to check to see if there was anyone following me. Obeying the instructions I had been given, I took out of my waistcoat pocket a fob watch in which Fandorin had installed a little round mirror, and pretended to be studying the dial.

There he was! Walking twenty paces behind me, a suspicious-looking character: tall, stooped, wearing a wide-peaked cap, with his coat collar raised. He clearly had his eyes fixed on me. Just to make sure, I turned the watch slightly to examine the far side of the street and discovered another man who looked equally suspicious – the same kind of burly thug, demonstrating the same kind of unambiguous interest in my person. Had they taken the bait?

Two of them at once! And perhaps Doctor Lind himself was not far away?

Could Fandorin see all this? I had played the role of the bait faithfully; now it was up to him.

The boatswain turned into a side street. I followed him. The other two followed me. There was no doubt at all left: those two charmers were the doctor’s helpers!

Suddenly the sailor turned into a narrow entrance. I slowed down, struck by an understandable concern. If those two followed me, and Fandorin had fallen behind or gone off somewhere else altogether, it was very probable that I would not get out of this dark crevice alive. And now the old man did not seem as simple as he had at the beginning. Ought I really to walk straight into a trap?

Unable to stop myself, I looked round quite openly. Apart from the two bandits the side street was completely deserted. One pretended to read the sign of a grocery shop; the other turned away with a bored air. And there was no sign of Erast Petrovich!

There was nothing else for it – I walked through the narrow entranceway then into a courtyard, then another archway, and another, and another. It was already dusk out in the street, and in here it was dark in any case, but I could still have made out the boatswain’s silhouette. The only problem was that the old man had disappeared, simply vanished into thin air! He could not possibly have got through this sequence of passages so quickly, not unless he had broken into a run, but in that case I would have heard the echoes of his steps. Or had he turned off at the first courtyard?

I froze.

Then suddenly, from out of the darkness on one side, I heard Fandorin’s voice: ‘Don’t just hang about like that, Ziukin. Walk without hurrying and stay in the light, so that they can see you.’

No longer understanding anything that was going on, I obediently walked on. Where had Fandorin come from? And where had the boatswain got to? Had Erast Petrovich really had enough time to stun him and hide him away?

I heard steps clattering behind me, echoing under the low vaulted ceiling. They started clattering faster and moving closer. Apparently my pursuers had decided to overtake me. Then I heard a dry click that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I had heard more than my share of clicks like that, when I was loading revolvers and cocking firing hammers for Pavel Georgievich – His Highness loves to fire his guns at the shooting range.

I turned round, expecting a roar and a flash, but there was no shot after all.

I saw two silhouettes, and then a third, against the background of a bright rectangle. The third one detached itself from the wall and threw out one foot with indescribable speed, and one of my pursuers doubled over. The other pursuer swung round smartly, and I quite clearly glimpsed the barrel of a pistol, but the fast-moving shadow swung one hand through the air – upwards, at an oblique angle – and a tongue of flame shot up towards the stone vault, while the man who had fired the gun went flying back against the wall, slid down it to the ground and sat there without moving.

‘Ziukin, come here!’

I ran across muttering: ‘Purge us of all defilement and save our souls.’ I could not say myself what had come over me – it must have been the shock.

Erast Petrovich leaned down over the seated man and struck a match, and it was not Erast Petrovich at all, but my acquaintance the boatswain with the grey moustache. I started blinking very rapidly.

‘Curses,’ said the boatswain. ‘I miscalculated the blow. And all because it’s so damn dark in here. The nasal septum has fractured and the bone has entered the brain. Killed outright. Well then, what about the other one?’

He moved across to the first bandit, who was struggling to get up off the ground.

‘Excellent, this one’s fresh as a cucumber. Give me some light on him, Afanasii Stepanovich.’

I struck a match. The feeble flame lit up a pair of vacant eyes and lips gasping for air.

The boatswain, who was, after all, none other than Fandorin himself, squatted down on his haunches and slapped the stunned man resoundingly across the cheeks.

‘Where is Lind?’

No reply. Nothing but heavy breathing.

‘ Où est Lind? Wo ist Lind ? Where is Lind?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, pausing between the different languages.

The eyes of the man lying on the ground were no longer vacant but animate with a fierce spite. His lips came together, twitched, stretched out, and a gob of spittle went flying into Fandorin’s face.

‘ Du, Scheissdreck! Küss mich auf— ’ 1

The hoarse screeching broke off as Fandorin jabbed the bandit in the throat with the edge of his open hand. The spiteful glow in the man’s eyes faded and the back of his head struck the ground with a dull thud.