There could be no doubt that the Japanese would also use melinite for subsequent acts of sabotage. They had tested the explosive on the Tezoimenitsky Bridge and the results had been satisfactory.
Melinite was not produced in Russia, the explosive was deployed only in the arsenals of France and Japan, and the Japanese called it simose or, as distorted by the Russian newspapers, ‘shimoza’. It was simose that was given most of the credit for the victory of the Japanese fleet at Tsushima: shells packed with melinite had demonstrated far greater penetrative and explosive power than the Russian powder shells.
Melinite, or picric acid, was ideally suited for sabotage work: powerful, easy to combine with detonators of various kinds and also compact. But even so, to sabotage a large modern bridge would require a charge weighing several poods. Where would the saboteurs get such a large amount of explosive and how would they convey it?
This was the key point – Erast Petrovich realised that straight away – but before he advanced along his primary line of search, he put certain precautions in place on his secondary one.
In case the melinite theory was mistaken and the enemy was intending to use ordinary dynamite or gun cotton, Fandorin gave instructions for a secret circular to be sent to all the military depots and arsenals, warning them of the danger. Of course, this piece of paper would not make the guards any more vigilant, but thieving quartermasters would be more afraid of selling explosive on the side, and that was precisely the way that such lethal materials usually found their way into the hands of Russia’s terrorist bombers.
Having taken this safety measure, Erast Petrovich concentrated on the routes for transporting melinite.
They would deliver it from abroad, and most likely from France (they couldn’t bring it all the way from Japan!).
You can’t ship a load of at least several poods in a suitcase, thought Fandorin, twirling in his fingers a test tube of light yellow powder that he had acquired from an artillery laboratory. He raised it to his face and absentmindedly drew the sharp smell in through his nose – the same ‘fatal aroma of shimoza’ that the Russian war correspondents were so fond of mentioning.
‘Well now, p-perhaps,’ Erast Petrovich murmured.
He quickly got up, ordered his carriage to be brought round, and a quarter of an hour later he was already on Maly Gnezdnikovsky Lane, at the Police Telegraph Office. There he dictated a telegram that set the operator, who had seen all sorts of things in his time, blinking rapidly.
The fifth syllable, consisting almost completely of face-to-face conversations
On the morning of 25 May, Countess Bovada’s boarder received news of the arrival of the Delivery and the Shipment on the same day, as had been planned. The organisation was working with the precision of a chronometer.
The Delivery consisted of four one-and-a-half-pood sacks of maize flour, sent from Lyons for the Moscow bakery ‘Werner and Pfleiderer’. The consignment was awaiting the consignee at the Moscow Freight Station depot on the Brest line. It was all very simple: turn up, show the receipt and sign. The sacks were extremely durable – jute, waterproof. If an overly meticulous gendarme or railway thief poked a hole in one to try it, the yellow, coarse-grained powder that poured out would pass very well for maize flour in wheat-and-rye-eating Russia.
Things were a little more complicated with the Shipment. The sealed wagon was due to arrive by way of a roundabout route from Naples to Batumi, and from there by railway via Rostov to the Rogozhsk shunting yard. According to the documents, it belonged to the Office of Security Escorts and was accompanied by a guard consisting of a corporal and two privates. The guard was genuine, the documents were fake. That is, the crates really did contain, as the transport documents stated, 8,500 Italian ‘Vetterli’ rifles, 1,500 Belgian ‘Francotte’ revolvers, a million cartridges and blasting cartridges. However, this entire arsenal was not intended for the needs of the Escorts Office, but for a man who went by the alias of Thrush. According to the plan developed by Vasilii Alexandrovich’s father, large-scale disturbances were supposed to break out in Moscow, putting a rapid end to the Russian tsar’s enthusiasm for the Manchurian steppes and Korean concessions.
The wise author of the plan had taken everything into account: the fact that the Guards were in St Petersburg, while the old capital had only a scrappy ragbag garrison made up of second-class reservists, and that Moscow was the transport heart of the country, and that the city had 200,000 hungry workers embittered by privation. Ten thousand reckless madcaps could surely be found among them, if only there were weapons. A single spark, and the workers’ quarters would be bristling with barricades.
Rybnikov began as he had been taught in his childhood – that is, with the hardest thing.
The staff captain arrived at the shunting yard. He introduced himself and was given an escort of a minor bureaucrat from the goods arrival section, and they set off to line number three to meet the Rostov special. The clerk felt timid in the company of the gloomy officer, who tapped impatiently on the planking with the scabbard of his sabre. Fortunately, they did not have to wait long – the train arrived exactly on the dot.
The commander of the guard, a corporal who was well past the prime of youth, moved his lips as he read the document presented to him by the staff captain, while the draymen whom Rybnikov had hired drove up to the platform one by one.
But then there was a hitch – there was absolutely no sign of the half-platoon that was supposed to guard the convoy.
Cursing the Russian muddle, the staff captain ran to the telephone. He came back white-faced with fury and let loose a string of such intricately obscene curses that the clerk shrank in embarrassment and the sentries wagged their heads respectfully. There obviously wasn’t going to be any half-platoon for the staff captain.
Having raged for the appropriate length of time, Rybnikov took hold of the corporal by the sleeve.
‘Look, mate, what’s your name… Yekimov, as you can see, this is one almighty cock-up. Help me out here, will you? I know you’ve done your duty and you’re not obliged, but I can’t send it off without a guard, and I can’t leave it here either. I’ll see you all right: three roubles for you and one each for your fine lads here.’
The corporal went to have a word with the privates, who were as long in the tooth and battered by life as he was.
The deal they struck was this: in addition to the money, His Honour would give them a paper saying the squad could spend two days on the town in Moscow. Rybnikov promised.
They loaded up and drove off. The staff captain at the front in a cab, then the drays with the crates, the sentries on foot, one on the left, one on the right, the corporal bringing up the rear of the procession. Pleased with the remuneration and leave pass they had been promised, the privates strode along cheerfully, holding their Mosin rifles at the ready. Rybnikov had warned them to keep their eyes skinned – the slanty-eyed enemy never slept.
Rybnikov had booked a warehouse on the River Moscow in advance. The draymen carried the Shipment in, took their money and left.
The staff captain carefully put the receipt from a member of the workmen’s co-operative away in his pocket as he walked over to the sentries from Rostov.
‘Thanks for the help, lads. I’ll settle up now, a bargain’s a bargain.’
The riverside wharf in front of the warehouse was deserted, and the river water, iridescent from patches of oil, splashed under the planking.