‘What are we to do?’ I asked, perplexed.
‘Fall into the trap. There is no other way. I have a trump card that Lind does not even suspect exists. And that trump card is you.’
I squared my shoulders because, I must admit, it was pleasing to hear something like that from the smug Fandorin.
‘Lind does not know that I have a helper. I shall disguise you very cunningly, not so that you will look like Fandorin, but so that you will look like a disguised Fandorin. You and I are almost the same height, and that is the most important thing. You are substantially more corpulent, but that can be concealed by means of loose-fitting garments. Anyone who spends too long hanging around that little window will arouse Lind’s suspicions of it being me in disguise.’
‘But at the same time it will not be hard to recognise Lind’s man, for surely he will “hang around”, as you put it, somewhere close by.’
‘Not necessarily, by any means. Lind’s men might work in rotation. We know that the doctor has at least two helpers left. They are almost as interesting to me as Lind himself. Who are they? What do they look like? What do we know about them?’
I shrugged.
‘Nothing.’
‘Unfortunately, that is actually the case. When I jumped down into the underground vault at the tomb, I had no time to see anything. As you no doubt recall, that bulky gentleman whose carotid artery I was obliged to crush threw himself on me straightaway. While I was busy with him, Lind was able to withdraw and maintain his complete anonymity. What was it that Emilie tried to tell us about him? “He’s . . .” He’s what?’
Fandorin frowned discontentedly.
‘There is no point in trying to guess. There is only one thing that we can say about his helpers. One of them is Russian, or at least has lived in Russia for many years and speaks the language absolutely fluently.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The text of the notice, Ziukin. Do you think that a foreigner would have written about a “diamond-precious love”?’
He stood up and started walking round the room. He took a set of jade beads out of his pocket and started clicking the small green spheres. I did not know where these beads had come from – probably out of the travelling bag. That was undoubtedly the source of the white shirt with the fold-down collar and the light-cream jacket. And the bottle of whisky, Mr Freyby’s present, had migrated from the travelling bag to the sideboard.
‘Tomorrow, or rather, t-today, Lind and I shall fight our decisive battle. He and I both understand this. A tie is not possible. Such is the peculiar nature of our barter: both parties are determined to take everything, and without trading anything for it. What would a tie signify in our case? You and I save the hostages but lose the Orlov.’ Fandorin nodded towards the travelling bag, where he had concealed the stone the previous day. ‘Lind remains alive, and so do I. And that does not suit either him or me. No, Ziukin, there will be no tie.’
‘But what if Mademoiselle and Mikhail Georgievich are already dead?’ I asked, giving voice to my greatest fear.
‘No, they are alive,’ Fandorin declared confidently. ‘Lind knows quite well that I am no fool. I will not hand over the stone until I am convinced that the hostages are alive.’ He clicked his beads once again and put them away in his pocket. ‘So this is what we shall do. You, in the role of the false Fandorin, keep an eye on the window. Lind’s men keep an eye on you. The real Fandorin keeps an eye on them. All very simple really, is it not?’
His self-assurance inspired me with hope, but infuriated me at the same time. That was the very moment at which the agonising doubt that had been tormenting me since the previous evening was finally resolved. I would not tell him what Xenia Georgievna had said. Mr Fandorin already had too high an opinion of himself without that.
He sat down at the table and, after a moment’s thought, jotted down a few lines in French. I looked over his shoulder.
For me, unlike you, people are more important than precious stones. You will get your diamond. At four a.m. bring the boy and the woman to the open ground where the Petersburg Chaussée turns towards the Petrovsky Palace. We shall conduct the exchange there. I shall be alone. It does not matter to me how many people you have with you.
Fandorin
‘Why precisely there, and why at such a strange time?’ I asked.
‘Lind will like it: the dead hour before dawn, a deserted spot. In essence it makes no difference whatsoever, but things will be decided all the sooner . . . Go to bed, Ziukin. Tomorrow will be an interesting day for us. And I shall go and post the letter in the box at the Central Post Office. Correspondence that arrives in the morning is handed out beginning from three in the afternoon. That is when you will take up your position. But first we shall transform you beyond all recognition.’
I cringed at those words. And, as it turned out, I was right to do so.
The Moscow Central Post Office seemed a poor place to me, no comparison at all with the post office in St Petersburg. It was dark and cramped with no facilities whatever for the customers. In my view a city of a million people ought to acquire a somewhat more presentable central post office. For my purposes, however, the squalidness of this state institution actually proved most opportune. The congestion and poor lighting made my aimless wandering around the hall less obvious. Fandorin had dressed me up as a collegiate counsellor of the Ministry of Agriculture and State Lands, and so I looked very impressive. Why would such a staid gentleman with clean-shaven chops spend so many hours at a stretch sauntering around between the battered counters? Several times I halted as if by chance in front of a chipped mirror in order to observe the people coming in less conspicuously. And, why not admit it? I also wanted to get a better look at myself.
I fancied that the appearance of an individual of the sixth rank suited me very well indeed. It was as if I had been born with those velvet buttonholes decorated with gold braid and the Order of St Vladimir hanging round my neck. (The order had come out of that same travelling bag.) Nobody stared at me in amazement or disbelief – I was a perfectly regular official. Except perhaps for the attendant in the poste restante window, who from time to time cast attentive glances in my direction. And quite naturally too – I had been marching past him since three o’clock in the afternoon. And business hours at the post office during the coronation celebrations had been extended right up to nine, owing to the large volume of mailings, so I was stepping out for quite a long time.
But never mind the attendant at the window. The worst thing of all was that time was going to waste. None of the people who approached the little window presented treasury bills. No one loitered nearby for a suspiciously long time. I did not even notice something that Fandorin had warned me about: someone who left the hall and returned repeatedly.
As the end of the day approached, despair began to take a grip of me. Could Lind really have worked out our plan? Had everything gone wrong?
But at five minutes to nine, when the post office was already preparing to close, a portly sailor with a grey moustache wearing a dark-blue pea jacket and a cap with no cockade came striding in briskly through the doors. He was clearly a retired boatswain or pilot. Without bothering to look round, he walked straight across to the little window with the poste restante sign and rumbled in a voice rendered hoarse by drink: ‘There’s supposed to be a little letter here for me. For the bearer of a banknote with the number . . .’ He rummaged in his pocket for a while and took out a note, held it out as far as possible from his long-sighted eyes and read: ‘One three seven zero seven eight eight five nine. Got anything?’