They were both going on the same eastbound express, only Bridge was travelling on his railway worker’s pass, in third class, and Tunnel was in the mail coach. Then their paths would part. The former would change to the locomotive of a freight train at Syzran, and in the middle of the Volga he would throw the boxes into the firebox. The latter would ride on as far as Lake Baikal.
For the sake of good order, Rybnikov decided to make certain that the agents collected the baggage by observing in person – naturally, without letting them see him.
As night was drawing to an end, he left the boarding house dressed in the style of a ‘little man’, with a crooked peaked cap and a collarless shirt under a jacket.
Casting a brief glance at the edge of the sky, which was just turning pink, he slipped into his role and jogged off along Chistoprudny Lane like a stray mongrel.
SHIMO-NO-KU
The first syllable, in which iron stars rain down from the sky
The putative Japanese had now been lost, and the Moscow Okhrana was tailing Thrush, so the efforts of the Petersburgians were concentrated entirely on the left luggage office. The items had been deposited there for twenty-four hours, which indicated that they would be called for no later than midday.
Fandorin and Mylnikov took up position in a secret observation post the evening before. As has already been mentioned, railway gendarmes were concealed in close proximity to the left luggage office, and Mylnikov’s agents were also taking turns to stroll around the square in front of the station, so the two bosses installed themselves comfortably in the premises of Lyapunov’s Funeral Services, which were located opposite the station, offering a superlative panoramic view. The American glass of the shop window was also very handy for their purpose, being funereal black and only allowing light through in one direction.
The two partners did not switch on the light – they had no real need for it anyway, since there was a street lamp burning nearby. The night hours dragged by slowly.
Every now and then the telephone rang – it was their subordinates reporting that the net had been cast, all the men were in position and vigilance was not slackening.
Fandorin and Mylnikov had already discussed everything to do with the job, but the conversation simply would not gel when it came to more abstract subjects – the ranges of the two partners’ interests were simply too different.
The engineer was not concerned, the silence did not bother him, but it drove the court counsellor wild.
‘Did you ever happen to meet Count Loris-Melikov?’ he asked.
‘Certainly,’ replied Fandorin, ‘but no more than that.’
‘They say the man had a great mind, even though he was Armenian.’
Silence.
‘Well, what I’m getting at is this. I’ve been told that before he retired His Excellency had a long tête-à-tête with Alexander III, and he made all sorts of predictions and gave him lots of advice: about a constitution, about concessions to foreigners, about foreign politics. Everyone knows the late tsar wasn’t exactly bright. Afterwards he used to laugh and say: “Loris tried to frighten me with Japan – just imagine it! He wanted me to be afraid of Japan”. That was in 1881, when no one even thought Japan was a proper country! Have you heard that story?’
‘I have had occasion to.’
‘See what kind of ministers Alexander II, the old Liberator, had. But Sandy number three had no time for them. And as for his son, our Nicky, well, what can you say… The old saying’s true: If He wants to punish someone, He’ll take away their reason. Will you at least say something! I’m talking sincerely here, straight from the heart. My soul’s aching for Russia.’
‘S-so I see,’ Fandorin remarked drily.
Not even taking a meal together brought them any closer, especially since each of them ate his own food. An agent delivered a little carafe of rowanberry vodka, fatty bacon and salted cucumbers for Mylnikov. The engineer’s Japanese servant treated him to pieces of raw herring and marinaded radish. Polite invitations from both parties to sample their fare were both declined with equal politeness. At the end of the meal, Fandorin lit up a Dutch cigar and Mylnikov sucked on a eucalyptus pastille for his nerves.
Eventually, at the time determined by nature, morning arrived.
The street lamps went out in the square, rays of sunlight slanted through the steam swirling above the damp surface of the road and sparrows started hopping about on the pavement under the window of the undertaker’s office.
‘There he is!’ Fandorin said in a low voice: for the last half-hour he had been glued to his binoculars.
‘Who?’
‘Our man. I’ll c-call the gendarmes.’
Mylnikov followed the direction of the engineer’s binoculars and put his own up to his eyes.
A man with a battered cap pulled right down to his ears was ambling across the broad, almost deserted square.
‘That’s him all right!’ the court counsellor said in a bloodthirsty whisper, and immediately pulled a stunt that was not envisaged in the plan: he stuck his head out through a small open windowpane and gave a deafening blast on his whistle.
Fandorin froze with the telephone receiver in his hand.
‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’
Mylnikov grinned triumphantly and tossed his reply back over his shoulder:
‘Well, what did you expect? Didn’t think Mylnikov would let the railway gendarmes have all the glory, did you? You can sod that! The Jap’s mine, he’s mine!’
From different sides of the square, agents dashed towards the little man, four of them in all. They trilled on their whistles and yelled menacingly.
‘Stop!’
The spy listened and stopped. He turned his head in all directions. He saw there was nowhere to run, but he ran anyway – chasing after an empty early tram that was clattering towards Zatsepa Street.
The agent running to cut him off thought he had guessed his enemy’s intentions – he darted forward to meet the tramcar and leapt nimbly up on to the front platform.
Just at that moment the Japanese overtook the tram, but he didn’t jump inside; running at full speed, he leapt up and grabbed hold of a rung of the dangling ladder with both hands, and in the twinkling of an eye, he was up on the roof.
The agent who had ended up inside the tram started dashing about between the benches – he couldn’t work out where the fugitive had disappeared to. The other three shouted and waved their arms, but he didn’t understand their gesticulations, and the distance between them and the tram was gradually increasing.
Spectators at the station – departing passengers, people seeing them off, cab drivers – gaped at this outlandish performance.
Then Mylnikov clambered out of the open window almost as far as his waist and howled in a voice that could have brought down the walls of Jericho:
‘Put the brake on, you idiot!’
Either the agent heard his boss’s howling, or he twigged for himself, but he went dashing to the driver, and immediately the brakes squealed, the tram slowed down and the other agents started closing in on it rapidly.
‘No chance, he won’t get away!’ Mylnikov boasted confidently. ‘Not from my aces he won’t. Every one of them’s worth ten of your railway boneheads.’
The tram had not yet stopped, it was still screeching along the rails, but the little figure in the jacket ran along its roof, pushed off with one foot, performed an unbelievable somersault and landed neatly on a newspaper kiosk standing at the corner of the square.
‘An acrobat!’ Mylnikov gasped.
But Fandorin muttered some short word that obviously wasn’t Russian and raised his binoculars to his eyes.