Boris Akunin - Special Assignments

Anisii gazed like a man enchanted at the 'boy's' slim neck, and the ideal oval ear with that antitragus, and the thoughts that crept into the mind of the candidate for a state title were entirely inappropriate for a church, especially during the Lenten Fast.

He started, crossed himself and began making his way through to the exit.

Eropkin remained praying and fasting in the church until late and only arrived home after ten. From where the agent Latzis was freezing on the roof of the next house, people could be seen starting to harness horses into a closed sleigh. It seemed that, despite the late night hour, Samson Kharitonovich was not intending to take to his bed.

But Fandorin and Anisii had everything ready. There were three ways to drive away from Eropkin's house in Mertvy Lane: towards the Church of the Asssumption on the Graves, towards Starokoniushenny Lane, and on to Prechistenka Street, and there were sleighs standing unobtrusively at each crossroads.

The Full State Counsellor's sleigh - squat and covered with dark fabric - drove out of the oak gates at a quarter past eleven and set off towards Prechistenka Street. There were two strong-looking fellows in sheepskin jackets sitting on the coachbox, and the black-bearded mute was at the back, on the footboard.

The first of the two sleighs on duty at the entrance to Prechistenka Street set off in unhurried pursuit. The other five lined up behind and set off, keeping a respectful distance behind 'number one' - that was what the front echelon of the surveillance team was called in the jargon. At the back of number one there was a lighted red lantern that the sleighs behind could see from a long distance away.

Erast Petrovich and Anisii rode in a light sleigh, hanging back about a hundred and fifty yards behind the red lantern. The other numbers stretched out in a string behind them. There were peasant sleighs, and a coachman's troika, and a priest's twosome, but even the most unkempt-looking wooden sledges were solidly put together, on steel runners, and the horses had been specially selected to match - they might not be much to look at, but they had speed and stamina.

After the first turning (on to the embankment of the River Moscow), following instructions, number one fell back and, at Fandorin's signal, number two moved up, while number one fell in at the very end of the tail. Number two trailed the mark for exacdy ten minutes by the clock, and then turned off to the left, making way for number three.

In this case the strict observance of instructions proved far from excessive, because the black-bearded bandit on the footboard was wide awake; he was smoking a cigar and the thick-skinned brute wasn't bothered at all by the weather - he hadn't even covered his shaggy head with a cap, although a wind had come up and there were large wet flakes of snow fluttering down from the heavens.

Beyond the Yauza the sleigh turned left, but number three went straight on, giving way to number four. The Court Counsellor's sleigh was not included in the sequence of numbers, constantly maintaining second position.

And so they trailed the mark to his destination: the walls of the Novopimenovsky Monastery, with its squat towers glowing white in the night.

From a distance they saw one, two, three, four, five figures detach themselves from the sleigh. The last two were carrying something - either a sack or a human body.

A body!' gasped Anisii. 'Maybe it's time to take them.'

'Not so fast,' the Chief replied. 'We need to work out what's going on first.'

He set sleighs with agents on all the strategic routes and only then gestured to Tulipov to follow him at the double.

They approached the abandoned chapel cautiously and walked round it. On the far side, by a modest, rusty little door, they came across a sleigh and a horse tethered to a tree. It reached out its shaggy face to Anisii and gave a quiet, pitiful whinny - it had clearly been standing in the same spot for a long time and was feeling bored.

Erast Petrovich pressed his ear against the door; then, to test it, he pulled gently on the handle. The door unexpectedly opened slightly, without making the slightest sound. A dull light glimmered in the narrow crack and he heard a resounding voice uttering strange words: "Where are you going? I'll turn you to stone!'

'Curious,' whispered the Chief, closing the door hastily. 'The hinges are rusty, but they've been lubricated recently. All right, let's wait and see what happens.'

Five minutes later there was a loud commotion and rumbling inside, but almost immediately everything went quiet again. Fandorin put his hand on Anisii's shoulder: Not now; it's too soon.

Another ten minutes went by and suddenly a woman's voice started screeching: 'Fire! We're burning! Good people, we're burning!'

Immediately a man's voice took up the cry: 'Fire! We're burning! Fire!'

Anisii made a desperate rush for the door, but fingers of steel seized him by the half-belt of his greatcoat and pulled him back. 'I assume that so far this is just the first scene, and the main action is yet to come,' the Chief said quietly. 'We have to wait for the finale. It is no accident that the door has been oiled, and no coincidence that the horse is loitering outside. You and I, Tulipov, have taken up a key position. And one should only hurry in those cases when to delay is quite impossible.' Erast Petrovich raised a finger in admonition and Anisii could not help admiring the velvet glove with the silver press-studs.

The Court Counsellor had dressed like a dandy for the night operation: a long cloth coat lined with beaver fur, a white scarf, a silk top hat and a walking cane with an ivory knob. Anisii may have been wearing a ginger wig, but he had dressed up for the first time in his functionary's greatcoat with buttons bearing official crests and put on his new cap with a lacquered peak. Beside Fandorin, however, he was as dowdy as a sparrow beside a drake.

The Chief was about to say something else equally instructive, but suddenly there was such a bloodcurdling howl from behind the door, filled with such genuine suffering, that Tulipov also screamed at the shock of it.

Erast Petrovich's face tensed up; he clearly did not know if he ought to wait a little longer, or if this was the very case in which to delay was impossible. He twitched the corner of his mouth nervously and inclined his head to one side, as if he were listening to some voice that Anisii could not hear. The voice evidently told the Chief to act, because Fandorin resolutely swung the door open and stepped inside.

The scene that met Anisii's gaze was truly astonishing.

An old man with a grey beard, dressed in a hussar's uniform and a white robe that had slipped down towards his head, was hanging above an empty wooden table with his legs parted and attached to two ropes. Behind him, swinging a long, coiled whip, stood Eropkin's black-bearded cut-throat. Eropkin himself was sitting a bit further away, on a chair. There was a tightly stuffed sack lying at his feet, and the two sturdy young fellows who had travelled on the coachbox earlier, were squatting down by the wall, smoking.

But Tulipov only took all this in, out of the corner of his eye, in passing because his attention was immediately caught by the frail figure lying face-down and unmoving, lifeless. In three bounds Anisii rounded the table, colliding on his way with some weighty folio but keeping his footing and going down on his knees beside the recumbent woman.

When he turned her over on to her back with trembling hands, the blue eyes opened on the pale face and the pink lips muttered: 'Oh, how ginger ...'

Thank God, she was alive!

'What kind of torture chamber is this we have here?' Erast Petrovich's calm voice asked behind him, and Anisii straightened up, recalling his duty.