The Diamond Chariot (17 page)

The powerful locomotive commandeered by Danilov overhauled the Harbin express at the border of the province of Moscow and thereafter maintained a distance of one verst, which it only reduced just before Vladimir.

It came flying on to the next line only a minute after the express. Fandorin jumped down on to the platform without waiting for the locomotive to stop. The scheduled train halted at the station for only ten minutes, so every minute was precious.

The engineer was met by Captain Lenz, the head of the Vladimir Railway Gendarmes Division, who had been briefed about everything in detail by telephone. He goggled wildly at Fandorin’s fancy dress (greasy coat, grey moustache and eyebrows, with temples that were also grey, only there had been no need to dye them) and wiped his sweaty bald patch with a handkerchief, but did not ask any questions.

‘Everything’s ready. This way, please.’

He reported about everything else on the run, as he tried to keep up with Erast Petrovich.

‘The trolley’s waiting. The team has been assembled. They’re keeping their heads down, as ordered …’

The station postal worker, who had been informed of the basic situation, was loitering beside a trolley piled high with correspondence. To judge from the chalky hue of his features, he was in a dead funk. The room was packed with light-blue uniforms – all the gendarmes were squatting down, and their heads were bent down low too. That was so that no one would see them from the platform, through the window, Fandorin realised.

He smiled at the postal worker.

‘Calm down, calm down, nothing unusual is going to happen.’

He took hold of the handles and pushed the trolley out on to the platform.

‘Seven minutes,’ the gendarmes captain whispered after him.

A man in a blue jacket stuck his head out of the mail carriage, which was coupled immediately behind the locomotive.

‘Asleep, are you, Vladimir?’ he shouted angrily. ‘What’s taking you so long?’

Long moustache, middle-aged. Broad cheekbones? I suppose so, Erast Petrovich thought to himself, and whispered to his partner again:

‘Stop shaking, will you? And yawn, you almost overslept.’

‘There you go … Couldn’t keep my eyes open. My second straight day on duty,’ the Vladimir man babbled, yawning and stretching.

Meanwhile the disguised engineer was quickly tossing the mail in through the open door and weighing things up, wondering whether he should grab the man with the long moustache round the waist and fling him on to the platform. Nothing could be easier.

He decided to wait first and check whether there were three wooden crates measuring 15 × 10 × 15 inches in there.

He was right to wait.

He climbed up into the carriage and began dividing the Vladimir post into three piles: letters, parcels and packages.

The inside of the carriage was a veritable labyrinth of heaps of sacks, boxes and crates.

Erast walked along one row, then along another, but he didn’t see the familiar items.

‘What are you doing wandering about?’ someone barked at him out of a dark passage. ‘Get a move on, look lively! Sacks over this way, square items over there. Are you new, or something?’

This was a surprise: another postman, also about forty years old, with broad cheekbones and a moustache. Which one was it? A pity he didn’t have the clerk from the left luggage office with him.

‘Yes, I’m new,’ Fandorin droned in a deep voice, as if he had a cold.

‘And old too, from the look of you.’

The second postal worker came over to the first one and stood beside him. They both had holsters with Nagant revolvers hanging on their belts.

‘Why are your hands shaking –on a spree yesterday, were you?’ the second one asked the Vladimir man.

‘Just a bit …’

‘But didn’t you say this was your second day on duty?’ the first one, with the long moustache, asked in surprise.

The second one stuck his head out of the door and looked at the station building.

Which one of them? Fandorin tried to guess, slipping rapidly along the stacks. Or is it neither? Where are the crates of melinite?

Suddenly there was a deafening clang as the second postman slammed the door shut and pushed home the bolt.

‘What’s up with you, Matvei?’ the one with the long moustache asked, surprised again.

Matvei bared his yellow teeth and cocked the hammer of his revolver with a click.

‘I know what I’m doing! Three blue caps in the window, and all of them staring this way! I’ve got a nose for these things!’

Incredible relief was what Erast Petrovich felt at that moment – so he hadn’t wasted his time smearing lead white on his eyebrows and moustache and it had been worthwhile breathing locomotive soot for three hours.

‘Matvei, have you gone crazy?’ the one with the long moustache asked in bewilderment, gazing into the glittering gun barrel.

The Vladimir postal worker got the idea straight away and pressed himself back against the wall.

‘Easy, Lukich. Don’t stick your nose in. And you, you louse, tell me, is this loader of yours a nark? I’ll kill you!’ The subject grabbed the local man by the collar.

‘They made me do it … Have pity … I’ve only one year to go to my pension …’ said the local man, capitulating immediately.

‘Hey, my good man, don’t be stupid!’ shouted Fandorin, sticking his head out from behind the crates. ‘There’s nowhere you can go anyway. Drop the wea …’

He hadn’t expected that – the subject fired without even bothering to hear him out.

The engineer barely managed to squat down in time, and the bullet whistled by just above his head.

‘Ah, you stinking rat!’ Fandorin heard the man that the saboteur had called Lukich cry indignantly.

There was another crash, then two voices mingling together – one groaning, the other whining.

Erast Petrovich crept to the edge of the stack and glanced out.

Things had taken a really nasty turn.

Matvei was ensconced in the corner, holding the revolver out in front of him. Lukich was lying on the floor, fumbling at his chest with bloody fingers. The Vladimir postal worker was squealing with his hands up over his face.

Bluish-grey powder smoke swayed gently in the ghastly light of the electric lamp.

From the position that Fandorin had occupied, nothing could have been easier than to shoot the villain, but he was needed alive and preferably not too badly damaged. So Erast Petrovich stuck out the hand holding his Browning and planted two bullets in the wall to the subject’s right.

Exactly as required, the subject retreated from the corner behind a stack of cardboard boxes.

Shooting continuously (three, four, five, six, seven), the engineer jumped out, ran and threw himself bodily at the boxes – they collapsed, burying the man hiding behind them.

After that it took only a couple of seconds.

Erast Petrovich grabbed a protruding leg in a cowhide boot, tugged the saboteur out into the light of day (of the electric lamp, that is) and struck him with the edge of his hand slightly above the collarbone.

He had one.

Now he had to catch the other one, in glasses, who had collected the paper parcels.

Only how was he to find him? And was he even on the train at all?

But he didn’t have to search for the man in glasses – he announced his own presence.

When Erast Petrovich drew back the bolt and pushed open the heavy door of the mail carriage, the first thing he saw was people running along the platform. And he heard frightened screams and women squealing.

Captain Lenz was standing beside the carriage, looking pale and behaving strangely: instead of looking at the engineer, who had just escaped deadly danger, the gendarme was squinting off to one side.

‘Take him,’ said Fandorin, dragging the saboteur, who had still not come round, to the carraige door. ‘And get a stretcher here, a man’s been wounded.’ He nodded at the stampeding public. ‘Were they alarmed by the shots?’

‘No, not that. It’s a real disaster, Mr Engineer. As soon as we heard the shots, my men and I rushed out on to the platform, thinking we could help you … Then suddenly there was a wild, crazy howl from that carriage there …’ Lenz pointed off to one side. ‘“I won’t surrender alive!” That’s when it started …’

Two gendarmes lugged away Matvei, under arrest, and Erast Petrovich jumped down on to the platform and looked in the direction indicated.

He saw a green third-class carriage with not a single soul anywhere near it – but he glimpsed white faces with wide-open mouths behind the windows.

‘He has a revolver. And a bomb,’ Lenz reported hastily. ‘He must have thought we came dashing out to arrest him. He took the conductor’s keys and locked the carriage at both ends. There are about forty people in there. He keeps shouting: “Just try getting in, I’ll blow them all up!”’

And at that moment there was a blood-curdling shriek from the carriage.

‘Get back! If anybody moves, I’ll blow them all to kingdom come!’

However, he hasn’t blown them up yet, the engineer mused. Although he has had the opportunity. ‘I tell you what, Captain. Carry all the crates out of the mail carriage quickly. We’ll work out later which ones are ours. And observe every possible precaution as you carry them. If the melinite detonates, you’ll be building a new station afterwards. That is, not you, of course, b-but somebody else. Don’t come after me. I’ll do this alone.’

Erast Petrovich hunched over and ran along the line of carriages. He stopped at the window from which the threats to ‘blow everyone to kingdom come’ had been made. It was the only one that was half open.

The engineer tapped delicately on the side of the carriage: tap-tap-tap.

‘Who’s there?’ asked a surprised voice.

‘Engineer Fandorin. Will you allow me to come in?’

‘What for?’

‘I’d like to t-talk to you.’

‘But I’m going to blow everything in here to pieces,’ said the voice, puzzled. ‘Didn’t you hear that? And then, how will you get in? I won’t open the door for anything.’

‘That’s all right, don’t worry. I’ll climb in through the window, just don’t shoot.’

Erast Petrovich nimbly hauled himself up and in through the window as far as his shoulders, then waited for a moment, so that the bomber could get a good look at his venerable grey hair, before creeping into the carriage slowly, very slowly.

Things looked bad: the young man in spectacles had thrust his revolver into his belt, and he was holding one of the black packages. In fact, he had already thrust his fingers inside it – Fandorin assumed he was clutching the glass detonator. One slight squeeze and the bomb would detonate, setting off the other seven. There they were, on the upper bunk, covered with sackcloth.

‘You don’t look like an engineer,’ said the youth, as pale as death, examining the dusty clothing of the false loader.

‘And you don’t look like a p-proletarian,’ Erast Petrovich parried.

The carriage had no compartments; it consisted of a long corridor with wooden benches on both sides. Unlike the people clamouring on the platform, the hostages were sitting quietly – they could sense the nearness of death. There was just a woman’s voice tearfully murmuring a prayer somewhere.

‘Quiet, you idiot, I’ll blow the whole place up!’ the youth shouted in a terrible deep voice, and the praying broke off.

He’s dangerous, extremely dangerous, Fandorin realised as he looked into the terrorist’s wide, staring eyes. He’s not playing for effect, not throwing a fit of hysterics – he really will blow us up.

‘Why the delay?’ asked Erast Petrovich.

‘Eh?’

‘I can see that you are not afraid of death. So why are you putting it off? Why don’t you crush the detonator? There is something stopping you. What?’

‘You’re strange,’ said the young man in glasses. ‘But you’re right … This is all wrong. It isn’t how it should all happen … I’m selling myself cheap. It’s frustrating. And she won’t get her ten thousand …’

‘Who, your mother? Who will she not get the money from, the Japanese?’

‘What mother!’ the youth cried, gesturing angrily. ‘Ah, what a wonderful plan it was! She would have racked her brains, wondered who did it, where it was from. Then she would have guessed and blessed my memory. Russia would have cursed me, but she would have blessed me!’

‘The one you love?’ Fandorin said with a nod, starting to understand. ‘She is unhappy, trapped, this money would save her, allow her to start a new life?’

‘Yes! You can’t imagine what a hideous abomination Samara is! And her parents and brothers! Brutes, absolute brutes! Never mind that she doesn’t love me, that’s all right! Who could love a living corpse, coughing up his own lungs? But I’ll reach out to her even from the next world, I’ll pull her out of the quagmire … That is, I would have done …’

The young man groaned and started shaking so violently that the black paper rustled in his hands.

‘She won’t get the money because you failed to blow up the bridge? Or the tunnel?’ Erast Petrovich asked quickly, keeping his eyes fixed on that deadly package.

‘A bridge, the Alexander Bridge. How do you know that? But what difference does it make? Yes, the samurai won’t pay. I shall die in vain.’

‘So you are doing all this because of
her
, for the ten thousand?’

The youth in glasses shook his head.

‘Not only that. I want to take revenge on Russia. It’s a vile, abominable country!’

Fandorin sat down on the bench, crossed his legs and shrugged.

‘You can’t do Russia any great harm now. Well, you’ll blow up the carriage. Kill and maim forty poor third-class passengers, and the lady of your heart will be left to languish in Samara.’ He paused to give the young man a chance to reflect on that, then said forcefully: ‘I have a better idea. You give me the explosive, and then the girl you love will get her ten thousand. And you can leave Russia to her fate.’

‘You’ll deceive me,’ the consumptive whispered.

‘No. I give you my word of honour,’ said Erast Petrovich, and he said it in a voice that made it impossible not to believe.

Patches of ruddy colour bloomed on the bomber’s cheeks.