Boris Akunin: The Diamond Chariot

‘What on earth took you so long?’ the young man exclaimed nervously when he opened the door at the prearranged knock (twice, then three times, then a pause and twice again). ‘You’re Rybnikov, right? I’ve been waiting forty minutes for you!’

‘I had to weave around a bit. Thought I saw something …’ replied Vasilii Alexandrovich, sauntering round the tiny apartment and even looking into the toilet and outside the back door. ‘Did you bring it? Let me have it.’

‘Here, from Paris. You know, I was ordered not to come straight to Petersburg, but go via Moscow, so that …’

‘I know,’ the staff captain interrupted before he could finish, taking the two envelopes – one quite thick, the other very slim.

‘Crossing the border was really easy, incredibly easy, in fact. They didn’t even glance at my suitcase, never mind tap it for secret compartments. But the reception I got in Moscow was strange. That Thrush person wasn’t exactly polite,’ declared the speckled young man, who obviously wanted very much to have a chat. ‘After all, I am risking my own head, and I have a right to expect …’

‘Goodbye,’ Vasilii Alexandrovich interrupted him again after examining both envelopes and even feeling along their seams with his fingers. ‘Don’t leave straight after me. Stay here for at least an hour, then you can go.’

Stepping out of the entrance, the staff captain turned his head left and right, lit up a papirosa and set off along the street with his usual gait – jerky, yet surprisingly brisk. An electric tram went rattling past. Rybnikov suddenly stepped off the pavement into the road, broke into a run and leapt nimbly up on to the platform.

‘Now then, sir,’ the conductor said with a reproachful shake of his head. ‘Only the young shavers do that sort of thing. What if you’d come a cropper there? With that gammy leg of yours.’

‘Never mind,’ Rybnikov replied brightly. ‘What’s that the Russian soldiers say? A chestful of medals or your head in the bushes. And if I get killed, that’s all right. I’m an orphan, there’s no one to cry over me … No thanks, friend, I just hopped on for a minute,’ he continued, waving aside the ticket, and a minute later he jumped down on to the road in the same boyish fashion.

He dodged a horse cab, darted in front of the radiator of an automobile that started bellowing hysterically with its horn, and limped nimbly into a side street.

It was completely deserted there – no carriages, no pedestrians. The staff captain opened both envelopes. He glanced briefly into the thick one, saw the respectful form of address and regular rows of neatly inscribed hieroglyphs and put off reading it all until later – he slipped it into his pocket. But the second letter, written in a hasty cursive hand, engrossed Rybnikov’s attention completely.

The letter said this:

My dear son! I am pleased with you, but now the time has come to strike a decisive blow – this time not at the Russian rear line, and not even at the Russian army, but at Russia itself. Our forces have accomplished all that they can, but they are bled dry and the might of our industry is waning. Alas, Time is not on our side. Your task is to ensure that Time will no longer be an ally of the Russians. The tsar’s throne must be made to totter beneath him. Our friend Colonel A. has completed his preparatory work. Your task is to deliver the shipment, which he has dispatched to Moscow, to the consignee, whom you already know. Tell him to hurry. We cannot hold out for longer than three or four months .

One more thing. We badly need an act of sabotage on the main railway line. Any interruption in supplies to Linevich’s army will help stave off imminent disaster. You wrote that you had been thinking about this and you had some ideas. Put them into action, the time has come .

I know that what I ask of you is almost impossible. But were you not taught: ‘The almost impossible is possible’?

Your mother asked me to tell you she is praying for you .

After he had read the letter, Rybnikov’s high-cheekboned face betrayed no sign of emotion. He struck a match, lit the sheet of paper and the envelope, dropped them on the ground and pulverised the ashes with his heel. He walked on.

The second missive was from Colonel Akashi, a military agent in Europe, and consisted almost entirely of numbers and dates. The staff captain ran his eyes over it and didn’t bother to read it again – Vasilii Alexandrovich had an exceptionally good memory.

He lit another match and, while the paper was burning, glanced at his watch, lifting it almost right up to his nose.

There was an unpleasant surprise waiting for Rybnikov. The mirror-bright glass of the Japanese chronometer reflected the image of a man in a bowler hat with a walking cane. This gentleman was squatting down, inspecting something on the pavement, at the very spot where one minute earlier the staff captain had burned the letter from his father.

The letter didn’t matter at all, it had been completely incinerated. What alarmed Vasilii Alexandrovich was something else. This wasn’t the first time he had glanced into his cunning little piece of glass, and he hadn’t seen anyone behind him before. Where had the man in the bowler hat come from? That was what concerned him.

Rybnikov walked on as if nothing had happened, glancing at his watch more frequently than before. However, once again there was no one behind him. The staff captain’s black eyebrows arched up uneasily. The curious gentleman’s disappearance concerned him even more than his sudden appearance.

Yawning, Rybnikov turned into a gated passage that led him into a deserted stone courtyard. He cast a glance at the windows (they were dead, untenanted) and then suddenly, no longer limping, he ran across to the wall separating this yard from the next one. The barrier was immensely high, but Vasilii Alexandrovich demonstrated quite fantastic springiness – vaulting almost seven feet into the air, he grabbed hold of the edge and pulled himself up. He could have jumped across the wall with no effort, but the staff captain contented himself with glancing over the top.

The next yard was residential. A skinny little girl was hopping over chalk marks scrawled across the asphalt. Another, even smaller, was standing nearby, watching.

Rybnikov did not climb over. He jumped down, ran back to the passage, unbuttoned his fly and started urinating.

He was surprised in this intimate act by the man with the bowler hat and cane, who came jogging into the passage.

The man stopped dead, frozen to the spot.

Vasilii Alexandrovich was embarrassed.

‘Beg your pardon, I was desperate,’ he said, shaking himself off and gesticulating at the same time with his free hand. ‘It’s all our swinish Russian ignorance, not enough public latrines. They say there are toilets on every corner in Japan. That’s why we can’t beat the damn monkeys.’

The expression on the hasty gentleman’s face was wary but, seeing the staff captain smile, he also extended his lips slightly beneath his thick moustache.

‘Take your samurai now, how does he fight?’ said Rybnikov, continuing with his buffoonery, buttoning up his trousers and moving closer. ‘Our soldier boys will fill the trench right up to the top with shit, but your samurai, that slanty-eyed freak, he stuffs himself full of rice, so he’s got natural constipation. That way he can go a week without a crap. But then, when he’s posted back to the rear, he’s stuck on the crapper for two whole days.’

Delighted at his own wittiness, the staff captain broke into shrill laughter and, as if he was inviting the other man to share his merriment, prodded him lightly in the side with one finger.