Boris Akunin - The Diamond Chariot

‘A telephone pole … We could listen to what they’re saying …’

‘How?’ the lieutenant colonel asked in surprise.

‘Tap the line, from the pole.’

‘Sorry, Erast Petrovich, I don’t have a clue about technical matters. What does “tap the line” mean?

Fandorin, however, didn’t bother to explain anything – he had already made his decision.

‘One of the platforms on our Nicholas line is c-close by here …’

‘That’s right, the Petrovsko-Razumovskoe way station.’

‘There must be a telephone apparatus there. Send a gendarme. But be quick, don’t waste a second. He runs in, cuts the wire right at the wall, takes the telephone and comes straight back. No wasting time on explanations, he just shows his identification document, that’s all. At the double, now!’

A few moments later they heard the tramping of rapidly receding boots as the corporal rushed off to carry out his mission. About ten minutes after that he came dashing back with the severed telephone and wire.

‘Lucky it’s so long,’ the engineer said happily, and astounded the gendarmes by taking off his elegant coat, clutching a folding penknife in his teeth and shinning up the pole.

After fiddling with the wires for a bit, he came back down, holding the earpiece in his hands, with its wire leading up into the air.

‘Take it,’ he said to the staff captain. ‘Since you know Polish, you can do the listening.’

Lisitsky was filled with admiration.

‘What a brilliant idea, Mr Engineer! How incredible that no one ever thought of it before! Why, you could set up a special office at the telephone exchange! Listen to what suspicious individuals are saying! What tremendous benefit for the fatherland! And so very civilised, in the spirit of technological progr …’ The officer broke off in mid-word, raised a warning finger and informed them in a terrible whisper, ‘They’re calling! The central exchange!’

The lieutenant colonel and the engineer leaned forward eagerly.

‘A man … asking for number 398 …’ Lisitsky whispered jerkily. ‘Another man … Speaking Polish … The first one’s arranging to meet … No, it’s a gathering … On Novo-Basmannaya Street … In the Varvarin Company building … An operation! He said “operation”! That’s it, he cut the connection.’

‘What kind of operation?’ asked Danilov, grabbing his deputy by the shoulder.

‘He didn’t say. Just “the operation”, that’s all. At midnight, and it’s almost half past nine already. No wonder they’re bustling about like that.’

‘On Basmannaya? The Varvarin Company Building?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, also whispering without even realising it. ‘What’s there, do you know?’

The officers exchanged glances and shrugged.

‘We need an address b-book.’

They sent the same corporal running back to the way station – to dart into the office, grab the All Moscow guidebook off the desk and leg it back as quickly as possible.

‘The men at the way station will think the railway gendarme service is full of head cases,’ the lieutenant colonel lamented, but mostly for form’s sake. ‘Never mind, we’ll return it all afterwards – the telephone and the book.’

The next ten minutes passed in tense anticipation, with them almost tearing the binoculars out of each other’s hands. They couldn’t see all that well because it was starting to get dark, but all the lights were on in the dacha and hasty shadows flitted across the curtains.

The three of them went dashing to meet the panting corporal. Erast Petrovich, as the senior in rank, grabbed the tattered volume. First he checked what telephone number 398 was. It proved to be the Great Moscow Hotel. He moved on to the Listing of Buildings section, opened it at Novo-Basmannaya Street, and the blood started pounding in his temples.

The building that belonged to the Varvarin Company contained the administrative offices of the District Artillery Depot.

The lieutenant colonel glanced over the engineer’s shoulder and gasped.

‘Why, of course! Why didn’t I realise straight away … Novo-Basmannaya Street. That’s where they have the warehouses for the shells and dynamite that they send to the army in the field! They always have at least a week’s supply of ammunition! But, gentlemen, that’s … Why, it’s unheard of! Monstrous! If they’re planning to blow it up – almost half of Moscow will be blown to pieces! Why, those lousy Poles! Begging your pardon, Boleslav Stefanovich, I didn’t mean …’

‘What can you expect from socialists,’ said Staff Captain Lisitsky, interceding for his nation. ‘Pawns in the hands of the Japanese, that’s all. But what about those Orientals! Genuine new Huns! Absolutely no concept of civilised warfare!’

‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Danilov interrupted, with his eyes blazing. ‘There’s a silver lining to this cloud! The artillery stores adjoin the workshops of the Kazan railway, and that’s …’

‘… that’s our territory!’ Lisitsky concluded for him. ‘Bravo, Nikolai Vasilievich! We’ll get by without the provincials!’

‘And without the Okhrana!’ his boss said with a predatory smile.

The lieutenant colonel and the staff captain worked a genuine miracle of efficiency: in two hours they set up a sound, thoroughly planned ambush. They didn’t trail the saboteurs from Petrovsko-Razumovskoe – that was too risky. At night the lanes in the dacha village were empty and, as luck would have it, the moon was shining with all its might. It was more rational to concentrate all their efforts at a single spot, where the plotters had arranged their gathering.

Danilov brought out all the current members of the section for the operation, apart from those who were standing duty – sixty-seven men altogether.

Most of the gendarmes were set around the inside of the depot’s perimeter wall, with orders to ‘lie there quietly and not stick their heads up’. Lisitsky was the man in command on the spot. The lieutenant colonel himself took ten of his best men and hid in the management building.

To obtain permission for the railway gendarmes to run their own show on the territory of the artillery administration, they had to get the Director of Depositories, an old general who had fought against Shamil some fifty years previously, out of his bed. He got so agitated that it never even entered his head to nitpick about the finer points of jurisdiction – he just agreed to everything immediately and kept swallowing heart drops all the time.

Seeing that Danilov was managing perfectly well without him, the engineer distanced himself from the supervision of the ambush. He and Masa stationed themselves in an entrance opposite the gates of the depot. Fandorin chose the spot quite deliberately. If the gendarmes, who were not used to this kind of operation, let any of the saboteurs get away, then Erast Petrovich would block their path, and they would not get away from him! However, Danilov, elated by the preparations, understood the engineer’s decision in his own way, and a note of slight condescension appeared in the lieutenant colonel’s tone of voice, as if to say: Well, of course, I’m not criticising, you’re a civilian, you’re not obliged to put yourself in the way of a bullet.

Just as soon as everyone had taken up their positions and the nervous general had followed instructions by putting out the light in his office before pressing his face up against the windowpane, they heard the chiming of the clock in the tower on Kalanchovskaya Square, and a minute later three open carriages came rolling into the street from two directions – two from the Ryazan Passage and one from the Yelokhovsky Passage. The carriages met in front of the administration building and men got out of them (Fandorin counted five, and another three who stayed on the coach boxes). They started whispering to each other about something.