A few minutes later we were outside a small church, and there was a black carriage with curtained windows waiting in front of the next building. It looked very much like the one that I had seen a week earlier, although I could not vouch for it being the same one. A tall man with a hat pulled down very low jumped down off the coach box. All I could see of his face was a thick black beard. Without saying a word, he opened the door and pushed Mademoiselle inside.
I showed him my bundle and pronounced the phrase that I had prepared in a severe tone of voice: ‘This is the object of the exchange. It must not be touched.’
I do not know if he understood me, but he did not touch the bundle. He squatted down and very rapidly ran his hands over my entire body, touching even the most intimate places without the slightest sign of embarrassment.
‘If you do not mind, sir . . .’ I protested, but the search was already over.
Without speaking, the bearded man pushed me in the back, I got into the carriage and the door slammed. I heard the squeak of a bolt. The carriage swayed, and we set off.
I expect that at least half an hour must have passed before we struck up a conversation. It was Mademoiselle who began it, because I had still not thought of a way to start.
‘Strange,’ she said when the carriage swayed on a corner and our shoulders touched. ‘It is strange that he did not caress me today.’
‘What?’ I asked, amazed.
‘How do you say – perquisitionner?’
‘Ah, to frisk, to search.’
‘Yes, thank you. Strange that he did not search me. He usually does, to see if it is possible to hide a little pistol in the pantaloons.’
I took the liberty of leaning down to her ear and whispering: ‘We have a better weapon than that.’
‘Careful!’ Mademoiselle gasped. ‘I’m afraid!’
A woman is always a woman, even the very bravest!
‘It’s all right,’ I reassured her. ‘The detonator has not been activated yet; there is nothing to be afraid of.’
‘I keep thinking about Monsieur Fandorin’s second surprise,’ Mademoiselle suddenly said in French. ‘Could it possibly be that the bomb will go off in any case, blowing us and Doctor Lind and His Highness to pieces, and then afterwards, as Monsieur Fandorin said, they will find the stone among the rubble? The most important thing for the tsar is to keep the Orlov and avoid any publicity. And for Monsieur Fandorin, the main thing is to take his revenge on Doctor Lind. What do you think, Athanas?’
To be quite honest, her suspicions seemed quite plausible to me, but after a moment’s thought I found an appropriate objection.
‘In that case they would have given us a fake instead of the genuine stone. Then they would not have to search for anything in the rubble.’
‘And what makes you sure that it is the genuine Orlov in the sphere?’ she asked nervously. ‘We are not jewellers, after all. When you press the button, there will be an explosion, and that will be the promised surprise that you and I were not supposed to know about under any circumstances.’
I turned cold inside. This conjecture seemed only too logical.
‘Then that is our destiny,’ I said, crossing myself. ‘If you have guessed right, then the decision was taken by a higher power, and I shall carry it out to the letter. But you do not have to go into the chapel. When we get there, I shall tell the driver that there is no need for you to be present; I shall collect Mikhail Georgievich myself.’
Mademoiselle squeezed my hand.
‘Thank you, Athanas. You have restored my faith in human dignity. No. No, I shall go with you. I feel ashamed that I could have suspected Erast of being disloyal. For him, no precious stone, not even such a special one, could possibly be more important than the life of a child. And our lives too,’ she concluded in a quiet voice.
The second half of her brief emotional declaration somewhat spoiled the pleasant impression of the first, but nonetheless Iwas touched. I wanted to respond to her grip on my fingers, but that would probably have been too great a liberty. And so we rode on, with her hand still touching mine.
Unlike Mademoiselle, I was not entirely convinced of Mr Fandorin’s nobility. I thought it quite probable that the earthly existence of Afanasii Ziukin would come to an end in the very near future, and not in a quiet, humdrum fashion, as the entire logic of my lifewould have dictated, but amidst unseemly uproar and clamour. Emilie’s company rendered this thought less repulsive, which was undoubtedly an expression of a quality that I cannot stand in other people and have always tried to suppress in myself – cowardly selfishness.
Meanwhile, it was becoming harder and harder to breathe in the sealed carriage. There were drops of sweat running down my face and inside my collar. This was unpleasantly ticklish, but I could not wipe them away with my handkerchief – to do that, I would have had to take my hand away. Mademoiselle was also breathing rapidly.
Suddenly a thought occurred to me, so simple and terrible that the sweat started flowing even more abundantly. I tried to insert my hand into the bundle and open the lid of the sphere quietly without frightening Mademoiselle, but even so therewas an audible click.
‘What was that?’ Mademoiselle asked with a start. ‘What was that sound?’
‘Lind’s plan is simpler and more cunning than Fandorin imagines,’ I said, gasping for air. ‘I suspect that the doctor has ordered us to be driven in this closed coffin until we suffocate, so that he can take the Orlov without any trouble. But it won’t work – I am activating the detonator. As long as I remain conscious, I shall hold the bomb steady with both hands. But when I am exhausted, the sphere will fall . . .’
‘Vous êtes fou!’ Mademoiselle exclaimed, pulling her hand away and seizing hold of my elbow. ‘Vous êtes fou! N’y pensez pas. Je compte les détours, nous sommes presque là.’3
‘Too late, I have already pressed the button,’ I said, and took a firm grip of the sphere with both hands.
And then a minute later the carriage really did stop.
‘Well then, may God help us,’ Emilie whispered and crossed herself, only not in the Orthodox manner, but in the Catholic way, from left to right.
The door opened, and I screwed my eyes up against the bright light. Nobody blindfolded me, and I saw the peeling walls of a small chapel and also, a little distance away, perhaps a hundred paces, the towers of an old convent. As I stepped onto the foot-plate, I stole a glance around me. There were fishermen sitting by the pond and on the edge of the nearby square a knotty old oak stood, covered in fresh greenery, presumably with senior police agent Kuzyakin concealed somewhere amongst it. I felt a little bit calmer, although the failure to blindfold us probably signified that Lind did not intend to let us go alive. Mademoiselle looked over my shoulder and also started gazing around – ah, yes, this was the first time she had been here without a blindfold. All right, Doctor, I thought. If we are to die, we’ll take you with us, and I pressed the bundle tight against my chest.
The driver, standing to one side of the open door of the carriage, seized me by the elbow and pulled as if to say: Get out. I grimaced at the strength of those steely fingers.
The rusty door with the heavy padlock barely even creaked as it swung open to admit us. I walked into the gloomy interior, which was more spacious than it appeared from the outside, and saw several male figures. Before I could get a clear look at them, the door closed behind us, but the light did not disappear; it merely changed from grey to yellow because there were several oil lamps hanging on the walls.