Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

Are you going to get your own back?' Mimi asked timidly, looking up into his face.

'Oh, to hell with them. We need to clear out of Moscow. And the sooner the better.'

But in fact they didn't clear out of inhospitable Moscow, because the following day Momos had the idea for the grandiose scheme that he appropriately named 'La Grande Operation'. The idea occurred to him by pure chance, through a most amazing confluence of circumstances.

They were retreating from Moscow in strict order, taking every conceivable precaution. At the crack of dawn Momos had gone to the flea market and bought the equipment required for a total sum of three roubles, seventy-three and a half kopecks. He had removed all the make-up from his face, donned a five-sided cap with a peak, a quilted jacket and high boots with galoshes, transforming himself into an entirely unremarkable petty tradesman. Things had not been so simple with Mimi, because the police already knew what she looked like. After a little thought he had decided to turn her into a boy. In a sheepskin cap with earflaps, a greasy sheepskin jacket and huge felt boots she became absolutely indistinguishable from the kind of light-fingered Moscow juveniles to be found darting around the Sukharev Market - better watch out for your pocket!

In fact, Mimi really could rifle through other people's pockets quite as briskly as any regular market thief. Once, when they had found themselves all washed up in Samara, she had deftly relieved a rich merchant's waistcoat pocket of his grandfather's turnip watch. The watch was rubbish, but Momos knew it had sentimental value for the merchant. The inconsolable provincial had offered a reward of a thousand roubles for the family heirloom and been most voluble in his thanks to the girl student who found the watch in a roadside ditch. With those thousand roubles, Momos had opened up a Chinese pharmacy in that peaceful town and done a very good trade in herbs and roots for treating the various ailments suffered by merchants.

But what was the point in recalling former successes, when here they were, retreating from Moscow like the French, downcast and despondent? Momos assumed that there would be agents watching for them at the stations and he had taken appropriate measures.

First of all, in order to mollify the dangerous Mr Fandorin, he had sent all of Countess Addy's things to St Petersburg. He had, admittedly, been unable to resist adding a postscript to the accompanying receipt: 'To the Queen of Spades from the Jack of Spades.' He had sent the jade beads and the prints he had borrowed back to Malaya Nikitskaya Street via the municipal post, but without any postscript, preferring in this case to err on the side of caution.

He had decided not to put in an appearance at any railway station, but despatched his suitcases to the Bryansk Station in advance, to be loaded on to the following day's train. He and Mimi were going on foot. Once past the Dorogomilovskaya Gates, Momos was intending to hire a driver and ride in his sleigh as far as the first railway station, in Mozhaisk, where he would be reunited with his baggage on the following day.

He was in a sour mood, but meanwhile Moscow was still celebrating. It was Forgiveness Sunday, the final day of wild Pancake Week. At dawn the next day the fasting and praying would begin, the coloured globes would be taken down from the street lamps, the brightly painted fair booths would be dismantled and the number of drunks would sharply decrease; but today the people were still finishing up their revels, their food and their drink.

At the Smolensk market they were riding in 'diligences' down an immense wooden slope, everybody laughing and whistling and squealing. Everywhere you looked, they were selling hot pancakes - with herring heads, with buckwheat, with honey, with caviar. A Turkish conjuror in a red fez was cramming crooked yataghans into his white-toothed maw. An acrobat was walking on his hands and jerking his legs about in an amusing fashion. Some swarthy-faced, bare-chested fellow in a leather apron was belching tongues of flame out of his mouth.

Mimi turned her head this way and that like a genuine little urchin. Entering into her role, she asked Momos to buy her a poisonous red sugar rooster on a stick and delighted in licking the wretched treat with her sharp little pink tongue, although in real life she preferred Swiss chocolate, of which she could devour as many as five bars a day

But the people on the brightly decorated square were not only making merry and guzzling down pancakes. There was a long line of beggars sitting along the wall of the rich merchants' Church of the Mother of God of Smolensk, bowing their heads down to the ground, asking forgiveness from the Orthodox faithful and granting them forgiveness in return. This was an important day for the beggars, a profitable day. Many people approached them with offerings - some brought a pancake, some a half-bottle of vodka, some a kopeck.

Some big shot or other in an unbuttoned mink coat and with his bald head uncovered came striding heavily out of the church on to the porch. He crossed his puffy, repulsive features and shouted out in a loud voice: 'Forgive me, good Orthodox people, if Samson Eropkin has done you wrong!'

The beggars began bustling about and cackling discordantly: 'And you forgive us, little father! Forgive us, our benefactor!'

They were clearly expecting offerings, but no one pushed himself forward. Instead they all lined up briskly into two rows, clearing the way through to the square, where the big shot's magnificent open sleigh was waiting for him - lacquered wood lined with fur.

Momos stopped to see how a fat-face like this would go about buying his way into Paradise. It was obvious from his face that he was as vicious a bloodsucker as the world had ever seen, but even he was aiming for the Kingdom of Heaven. Momos wondered just what price he put on the entrance ticket.

A massive, black-bearded hulk with the face of an executioner came striding out after the pot-bellied benefactor, towering up over him by a head and a half. The hulk had a long leather whip wound round his right hand and elbow, and in his left hand he was carrying a canvas pouch. Every now and then the master turned to his massive lackey, scooped money out of the pouch and presented it to the beggars - one coin to each of them. When a little old man with only one leg lost patience and reached for the alms out of turn, the bearded hulk gave a menacing bellow and in a single, lightning-swift movement untwined the whip and lashed the cripple across the top of his grey head with the very tip of it - how the old fellow gasped!

Every time the mink-coated benefactor thrust a coin into one of the outstretched hands, he intoned: 'I give not to you, you pitiful drunks, not to you - but to the Lord God All-Merciful and the Mother of God, the Intercessor, for forgiveness of the sins of the servant of God, Samson.'

Momos looked harder and was able to satisfy his curiosity: as he ought to have expected, the fat-faced distributor of alms was buying his escape from the fires of hell rather cheaply, giving the beggars one copper kopeck each.

'Evidently the sins of the servant of God, Samson, are not so very great,' Momos muttered aloud, preparing to continue on his way.

A voice roughened and hoarse from alcohol mumbled right in his ear: 'They're great, right enough, son, oh they're great. You can't be from Moscow, then, if you don't know the famous Eropkin?'

Standing beside Momos was a skinny, sinewy ragamuffin with a nervous, twitching, yellowish face. The ragamuffin reeked of stale, cheap alcohol, and his gaze, directed past Momos at the niggardly donor, was filled with a fierce, burning hatred.

'That Samson sucks the blood of nigh on half of Moscow,' the jittery fellow explained to Momos. 'The dosshouses in Khi-trovka, the taverns in Grachi, at the Sukharev Market, and in Khitrovka again - they're almost all his. He buys up stolen goods from the Khitrovka "dealers" and lends money at huge rates of interest. In short, he's a vampire - a cursed viper, he is.'