The Diamond Chariot (61 page)

‘How does one gain access to the secret room?’ Fandorin asked.

‘I don’t know exactly. There’s a cunning lever somewhere – that’s all the
shinobi
told my old samurai. I don’t know any more than that, gentlemen, but you must admit that my information is highly valuable to you. I think you ought to let me go immediately.’

Asagawa and Fandorin glanced at each other.

‘We’ll see about that when we get back,’ said the inspector. ‘But you have earned your little bit of happiness.’

Hard though you may try,
You can’t pinch off a little
Piece of happiness

2.18

Two of them went off on ‘the job’ (that was what Fandorin called the operation to himself, in criminal style). The doctor, as the father of a family and a law-abiding member of society, did not express any desire to participate in such a risky undertaking. Lockston did express such a desire, but he was refused. Entirely abandoning his Japanese politeness, Asagawa declared that the American smelled of cigar smoke and beer from a mile away and Japanese did not smell like that. And his light blond hair would stand out too clearly in the darkness. At least the Russian vice-consul had hair that was a normal colour. Left alone with Erast Petrovich, the inspector was even less complimentary about the sergeant: ‘This matter requires brains, and our American bison knows no other way but to go at something bald-headed.’

The day was spent in preparation. Asagawa went to the police department, supposedly on official business, but really with one very simple goal: he filed down the tongue of the bolt on the window of the toilet. The titular counsellor prepared his outfit for the nocturnal adventure – he bought a costume mask and a close-fitting black fencing costume, and smeared his rubber-soled gymnastic shoes with boot polish.

He tried to catch up on his sleep, but he couldn’t.

When it started to get dark, he sent Masa to the Grand Hotel for the evening paper so that he wouldn’t follow him, and hurried to catch the last train.

He and the inspector travelled in the same carriage, but they sat at opposite ends and didn’t look at each other.

Looking out of the window at the lights drifting by in the darkness, Fandorin was surprised at himself. Why had he got mixed up in this wild adventure? What had made him gamble with his own honour and the honour of his country like this? It was terrible to think what the consequences would be if he, the Russian vice-consul, were caught at night in the office of the intendant of police. What made it worth taking such a risk? The chance to expose a scheming local official who was responsible for the death of another local official? Why, damn the lot of them!

The interests of Russia require it, Fandorin tried to convince himself rather uncertainly. By bringing down Suga, I shall strike a blow at a party hostile to the interests of my Homeland.

He was not convinced. After all, he himself had always said that no interests of the Homeland (at least, its geopolitical interests) could be more important than personal honour and dignity. A most honourable activity, this was – to go rifling through other people’s secret hiding places, dressed up like a chimney sweep.

Then he tried to justify things differently, from Asagawa’s point of view. There was such a thing as Justice, and also Truth, which it was the duty of every noble man to defend. One could not allow infamous acts to be committed with impunity. By conniving at them or washing one’s hands of the matter, one became an accomplice, you insulted your own soul and God.

But for all their grandeur, these highly moral considerations somehow failed to touch the titular counsellor very deeply. It was not a matter of defending Justice. After all, in weaving his plot, Suga could have been guided by his own ideas of Truth, which differed from Fandorin’s. In any case, there was no point in Erast Petrovich deceiving himself – he had not embarked on this nocturnal escapade for the sake of words that were written with a capital letter.

He rummaged about inside himself for a bit longer and finally came up with the right reason. Fandorin did not like it, for it was simple, unromantic and even ignominious.

I could not have borne one more sleepless night waiting for a woman who is never going to come again, the titular counsellor told himself honestly. Anything at all, any kind of folly, but not that.

And when the locomotive hooted as it approached the final station of Nihombasi, the vice-consul suddenly thought: I’m poisoned. My brain and my heart have been affected by a slow-acting venom. That is the only possible explanation.

And after thinking that, he calmed down immediately, as if now everything had fallen into place.

While there were still passers-by on the streets, Erast Petrovich maintained his distance from his partner. He walked along with the air of an idle tourist, casually swinging the briefcase that contained his spy’s outfit.

But soon they reached the governmental office district, where there were no people, because office hours had finished ages ago. The titular counsellor cut down the distance until he was almost walking in tandem with the inspector. From time to time Asagawa explained something in a low voice.

‘You see the white building at the far side of the bridge? That is the Tokyo Municipal Court. It’s only a stone’s throw from the department.’

Fandorin saw a white three-storey palace in the European Mauritanian style – rather frivolous for an institution of the judiciary. Behind it he could see a high wooden fence.

‘Over there?’

‘Yes. The estate of the princes Matsudaira used to be there. We won’t go as far as the gates, there’s a sentry.’

A narrow alley ran off to the left. Asagawa looked round, waved his hand, and the accomplices ducked into the dark, crevice-like passage.

They got changed quickly. The inspector also put on something black and close fitting, tied a kerchief round his head and muffled the lower half of his face in a rag.

‘This is exactly how the
shinobi
dress,’ he whispered with a nervous giggle. ‘Right, forward!’

They gained entrance to the site of the department very easily: Asagawa folded his hands into a stirrup, Fandorin set his foot in it and in an instant he was on top of the fence. Then he helped the inspector to scramble up. The police obviously didn’t have enough imagination to believe that miscreants might take it into their heads to break into the holy of holies of law and order voluntarily. In any case, there was no one patrolling the yard – just a figure in a uniform and cap over on the right, striding to and fro at the main entrance.

Asagawa moved quickly and confidently. Hunching over, he ran across to a low building in a pseudo-Japanese style, then along the white wall, past a long series of blank windows. The inspector stopped beside the window at the corner.

‘I think this is the one. Help me up.’

He put his arms round Fandorin’s neck, then stepped on the vice-consul’s half-bent knee with one foot, put the other on his shoulder, and grabbed hold of the window frame. He scraped with something, clicked something, and the small windowpane opened. Asagawa pulled himself up and seemed to be sucked into the black rectangle, so that only the lower half of his body was left outside. Then that disappeared into the window as well, and a few seconds later the large windowpane opened silently.

For form’s sake, before entering the building Erast Petrovich noted the time: seventeen minutes past eleven.

The arrangement of the Japanese toilet looked strange to him: a row of low cubicles that could only conceal a seated man up to the shoulders.

Fandorin discovered Asagawa in one of the wooden cells.

‘I advise you to relieve yourself,’ the black head with the strip of white for the eyes said in a perfectly natural tone of voice. ‘It is helpful before hazardous work. To prevent any trembling of the
hara
.’

Erast Petrovich thanked him politely, but declined. His
hara
was not trembling at all, he was simply oppressed by the melancholy presentiment that this business would not end well. Nonsensical thoughts about the next day’s newspaper headlines kept drifting into his mind, as they had done on that other memorable night: ‘RUSSIAN DIPLOMAT A SPY’, ‘OFFICIAL NOTE FROM JAPANESE GOVERNMENT TO RUSSIAN EMPIRE’ and even ‘JAPAN AND RUSSIA BREAK OFF DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS’.

‘Will you be much longer?’ the vice-consul asked impatiently. ‘It’s twenty-three minutes past eleven. The nights are short now.’

From the toilet they crept down a long, dark corridor, Asagawa on his twisted-straw sandals and Fandorin on his rubber soles. The department of police was sleeping peacefully. That’s what a low level of crime does for you, thought the titular counsellor, not without a twinge of envy. Along the way they encountered only a single office with a light burning, where some kind of night work seemed to be going on, and once a duty officer carrying a candle came out from round a corner. He yawned as he walked past, without even noticing the two black figures pressed back against the wall.

‘We’re here,’ Asagawa whispered, stopping in front of a tall double door.

He put a piece of metal into the keyhole (an ordinary picklock, Erast Petrovich noted), turned it and the accomplices found themselves in a spacious room: a row of chairs along the walls, a secretary’s desk, another door in the far corner. It was clearly the reception area. Consul Doronin had told Fandorin that six years earlier there had been a great bureaucratic reform. The functionaries had all been dressed in uniforms instead of kimonos and forced to sit on chairs, not on the floor. The bureaucracy had almost rebelled at first, but had gradually got accustomed to it. What a shame. It must have been very picturesque before. Imagine arriving at a government office, and the heads of department and clerks and secretaries are all dressed in robes and sitting there cross-legged. Fandorin sighed, lamenting the gradual displacement of the variety of life by European order. In a hundred years’ time everything would be the same everywhere, you wouldn’t be able to tell whether you were in Russia or Siam. How boring.

The room located beyond the reception area was also not in any way remarkable. An ordinary office of some important individual. One broad, short desk, and beyond it a long narrow table. Two armchairs on one side, for official conversations with important visitors. Bookshelves with codes of laws. A photographic portrait of the emperor hanging in the most prominent position. The only unusual thing, from the Japanese point of view, was the crucifixion hanging beside the image of the earthly ruler. Ah, yes, Suga was a Christian, he had a cross hanging round his neck too.

A fine follower of Christ, thought Erast Petrovich, shaking his head, but immediately felt ashamed: As if our own lovers of God don’t betray or kill.

Asagawa closed the curtains more tightly, lit an oil lamp and walked up to the titular counsellor. He seemed excited, almost triumphant.

‘I don’t know if we’ll find the hiding place or how all this will end, so I will say now what I must say. I should have come here alone. This is our Japanese business.
My
business. But I am very grateful to you, Fandorin-san, for volunteering to keep me company. I have more faith in your acumen than I do in my own. Without you, I would almost certainly not find the lever, but you are cunning. Almost as cunning as Intendant Suga.’

Erast Petrovich bowed ceremoniously, but the inspector did not understand the irony. He bowed in reply, only more deeply.

‘Do not think I do not understand how much more exalted your sacrifice is than mine. If we are caught, what is that to me, I shall merely take my life and bring disgrace on the clan of Asagawa, which has served the law honestly for two and a half centuries. But you will disgrace your country and your state. You are a very brave man, Fandorin-san.’

They exchanged bows again, this time without even a hint of playfulness on the vice-consul’s side, and set about their search.

First they sounded out the two side walls, then divided the office into left and right sections. Unlike the energetic inspector, who nimbly tapped all the skirting boards and floorboards in his half, checked all the items on the desk and then set about the books, Erast Petrovich hardly touched anything at all. He strode around unhurriedly, shining his little American torch on things. An excellent little item, the very latest design. It produced a bright, dense ray of light. When it started to fade – about every one and a half minutes – you had to pump a spring with your fingers, and the torch immediately came back to life.

He stood in front of the portrait for a while. His Majesty the Mikado was shown in military uniform, with epaulettes and a sword. Fandorin thought the young face with the sparse moustache bore the imprint of degeneracy (which was hardly surprising, considering the dynasty’s twenty-five centuries of genealogical history), but Emperor Mutsuhito’s gaze was searching and intent. Patient, cautious, secretive, unsure of himself, enquiring, thought the vice-consul, practising his physiognomics. A master of
ninso
would undoubtedly have seen far more, but even this was enough to tell that the young royal ruler would go far.

‘I’ve finished my half,’ Asagawa declared. ‘There’s nothing.’

‘Would you like to swap? By all means.’

Fandorin walked out into the centre of the room, sat on the conference table and dangled one leg. A quarter past twelve.

An archive was something that you needed often. So the answer was most likely one of two things: either a lever within easy reach that could be operated without getting up from the desk; or, on the contrary, the lever was located right beside the entrance to the secret compartment. Asagawa had examined everything on the desk very thoroughly indeed. So it must be the second option.

There were two walls in which the secret room could be hidden. The wall between the office and reception area could be eliminated, along with the external wall.

Fandorin walked backwards and forwards, scrutinising.

The clock on the wall struck one.

‘Have you moved that?’ the titular counsellor asked, pointing at the clock.