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.
The engineer took out of his pocket a beautiful small, flat pistol, manufactured to order at the Browning factory in Belgium, and tugged on the breech. His valet demonstratively turned away.
Well then, come on, Erast Petrovich thought to himself, trying to hurry the Poles along, and sighed – there was not much hope that Danilov’s fine eagles would take anyone alive. But never mind, at least one of the villains had to stay with the horses. The lucky man would escape a gendarme’s bullet and fall into Fandorin’s hands.
The discussions ended. But instead of moving towards the doors of the administration building or straight to the gates, the saboteurs got back into their carriages, cracked their whips and all three carriages dashed away from the depot, picking up speed, in the direction of Dobraya Sloboda.
Had they noticed something? Had they changed their plan?
Erast Petrovich ran out of the gateway.
The carriages had already disappeared round the corner.
The engineer pulled his splendid coat off his shoulders and set off at a run in the same direction.
His servant picked up the abandoned coat and jogged after him, puffing and panting.
When Lieutenant Colonel Danilov and his gendarmes darted out on to the porch, Novo-Basmannaya Street was already empty. The sound of hoofbeats had faded into the distance, and the moon was shining placidly in the sky.
It turned out that Erast Petrovich Fandorin, a responsible member of a highly serious government agency, a man no longer in the prime of youth, could not only shin up telephone poles, but could also run at a quite fantastic speed, while making no sound and remaining virtually invisible – he ran close to the walls, where the shadows of night were thickest of all, skirting round the patches of moonlight or vaulting over them with a prodigious leap. More than anything else, the engineer resembled a phantom, careering along the dark street on some otherworldly business of his own. It was a good thing he didn’t run into anybody out walking late – the poor devil would have been in for a serious shock.
Fandorin caught up with the carriages quite soon. After that he started running more gently, in order to keep his distance.
The pursuit, however, did not continue for long.
The carriages halted behind the Von-Dervizov Grammar School for Girls. They were parked wheel to wheel, and one of the drivers gathered all the reins into a bundle, while the other seven men set off towards a two-storey building with a glass display window.
One of them fiddled with the door for a moment, then waved his hand, and the whole group disappeared inside.
Erast Petrovich stuck his head out from round the corner, trying to work out how to creep up on the driver, who was standing on his box, gazing around vigilantly in all directions. All the approaches were brightly lit by the moon.
At this point Masa came panting up. Realising from Fandorin’s expression that his master was about to take decisive action, he threw his false pigtail over his shoulder and whispered angrily in Japanese:
‘I shall only intervene if the supporters of His Majesty are going to kill you. But if you start killing the supporters of His Majesty the Mikado, then do not count on my help.’
‘Oh, drop it,’ Erast Petrovich replied in Russian. ‘Don’t get in my way.’
There was a muffled scream from the house. No further delay was possible.
The engineer ran soundlessly to the nearest lamp-post and hid behind it. He was now only ten paces away from the driver.
Taking a monogrammed cigar case out of his pocket, Fandorin tossed it away from him.
The driver started at the jingling sound and turned his back to the lamppost.