Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

Eropkin himself was sitting on a chair, bright crimson and sweaty. His Excellency had evidently been making a great deal of noise while Momos was in a state of blissful oblivion. The two minions were standing on tiptoe on the table, arranging something there. When Momos looked more closely, he saw two dangling ropes, and he didn't like the look of the arrangement at all.

'Well, my darlings,' Samson Eropkin said in an amiable voice when he saw that Momos had come round, 'wanted to clean out Eropkin himself, did we? You're cunning, you devils, cunning. Only Eropkin's smarter. Wanted to make me the laughing-stock of all Moscow, did we? But never mind,' he drawled with relish. 'Now I'll give you something to laugh about. There's a vicious fate in store for anyone who tries to take a bite at Eropkin, a terrible fate - to teach the others a good lesson.'

'Why this melodrama, Your Excellency' Momos said with a grin, putting on a brave front. 'It really doesn't become you. A full state counsellor, a bulwark of piety. After all, there is the court, the police. Let them punish us; why should you get your hands dirty? And then, after all, my dear fellow, you have lost nothing. Haven't you acquired an old gold ring? You have. And the treasure too. Keep them, as compensation, so to speak, for the injury.'

'I'll give you compensation,' said Samson Kharitonovich, smiling with just the corners of his mouth. There was a soft, frightening glow in his eyes. "Well, is it ready?' he shouted to his men.

They jumped down on to the floor. 'It's ready, Samson Kharitonovich.'

'Go on then, string him up.'

'I beg your pardon, how do you mean - "string him up"?' Momos asked indignantly when he was lifted off the floor with his feet upwards. 'This is beyond all - Help! Help! Police!'

'Shout away, shout away' Eropkin told him. 'If there's anyone walking by in the middle of the night, he'll just cross himself and take to his heels as fast as he can.'

Then Mimi suddenly started wailing piercingly: 'Fire! We're burning! Good people, we're burning.'

She'd come up with the right idea: a passer-by wouldn't be frightened by a shout like that; he'd come running to help or dash to the monastery to sound the alarm bell.

Momos joined in with her. 'Fire! We're burning! Fire!'

But they weren't allowed to carry on shouting for long. The black-bearded mute tapped Mimi gently on her head with his fist and the delicate little swallow simply slumped over, landing face-down on the floor. The stinging serpent of the whip wound itself round Momos's throat once again and his howl was reduced to a croak.

The torturers lifted up the bound man and dragged him on to the table. They tied one ankle to one rope and the other ankle to the other, pulled, and a moment later Momos was dangling above the rough-planed boards like a letter Y. His grey beard hung downwards, tickling his face; his surplice slid down, exposing legs in narrow breeches and boots with spurs. Once out in the street, Momos had been intending to tear off his grey hair, pull off his loose robe and transform himself into a dashing hussar - no one would ever have recognised him as the 'hermit'.

He ought to have been sitting in the troika now, with Mimi on one side and the sack with all that money in it on the other, but instead of that he'd been ruined by that dastardly German invention, and here he was, dangling in the air with his face towards that near but unreachable door that led out into the snowy night, to the sleigh, salvation, good luck and life.

He heard Eropkin's voice behind him: 'Tell me, Kuzya, how many blows would it take you to split him in half?'

Momos began twisting round on the ropes, because he was interested in the answer to that question too. When he twisted right round, he saw the mute holding up four fingers. Then he thought for a moment and added a fifth.

'Well, no need to do it in five,' Samson Kharitonovich said, to make his wishes quite clear. 'We're not in any hurry. Better do it gently, a little bit at a time.'

'Honestly Your Excellency' Momos said hastily, 'I've already learned my lesson and I've been badly frightened - honestly I have. I have some savings. Twenty-nine thousand. I'd be glad to pay them as a fine. You're a man of business. What's the point of giving way to emotions?'

'And I'll deal with the lad later,' Eropkin said thoughtfully, with obvious pleasure, as if he were talking to himself.

Momos shuddered, realising that Mimi's fate would be more terrible than his own. 'Seventy-four thousand!' he shouted, for that was exactly how much he had left from his previous Moscow operations. 'But the boy's not to blame: he's feeble-minded.'

'Go on, show him your skill,' ordered Eropkin.

The whip gave a predatory whistle. Momos gave a sickening screech, because something cracked and crunched between his outstretched legs. But there was no pain.

'You've unpicked his trousers very neatly there,' Eropkin said approvingly. 'Now go in little bit deeper. Just half a vershok. To make him howl. And then keep on going in by the same amount until we have two halves dangling on two ropes.'

Momos felt a cold draught on the most vulnerable, most delicate part of his body and realised that with his first virtuoso stroke Kuzma had slit open his breeches along the seam without touching him.

Oh Lord, if you exist, prayed the man who had never prayed in his life, the man who had once been called Mitenka Sawin, send me an archangel, or even your shabbiest little angel. Save me, Lord. I swear that henceforth I'll only turn over low snakes like Eropkin and no one else. Honestly, on my word of honour, Lord.

At that moment the back door opened. The first thing Momos saw in the opening was the night, with streaks of wet snow slanting down across it. Then the night retreated and became the background as its place was taken by the silhouette of a slim figure wearing a long, waisted coat and tall top hat, and carrying a walking cane.

Anisii had scoured his features with soap, and pumice and even sand - but still the swarthiness had not completely gone. Erast Petrovich still had it too, but it looked well on a handsome devil like him, rather like a dense tan. On Tulipov, however, the nut colouring had distributed itself across his face in little islets as it faded, and now, with his patchy skin and thin neck, he looked like an African giraffe - only not so tall. But every cloud has a silver lining: his pimples had disappeared completely ... absolutely, as if they had never even existed. In two or three weeks his skin would be clear - the Chief had promised. And the cropped hair would soon grow back - no two ways about that.

The morning after they had caught the Jack red-handed with his female accomplice (whom Anisii could not recall without a languorous sigh and a sweet thrill in various parts of his soul and his body) and then let them go again, he and the Court Counsellor had had a brief but important conversation.

'Well now,' Fandorin said with a sigh. 'You and I, Tulipov, have made fools of ourselves, but we may assume that the Jack of Spades' Moscow tour is now at an end. What are you thinking of doing now? Do you wish to return to the department?'

Anisii gave no reply and merely blenched a deadly shade of white, although that could not be seen under his swarthy stain. The thought of returning to his miserable career as a courier after all the wonderful adventures of the last two weeks seemed absolutely unbearable.

'Naturally, I will give you the most flattering references possible for the chief of police and Sverchinsky. It is not your fault that I was not up to the job. I shall recommend that you be transferred to the investigative or operational unit -whichever you wish. But I also have another proposition for you, Tulipov...'