The Diamond Chariot (64 page)

‘
Bu
’, he read. Then ‘
ru
’, ‘
ko
’, ‘
ku
’, ‘
su
’.

Bu-ru-ko-ku-su
?

Bullcox!

Why, of course!

Everything immediately fell into place and the scales fell from the titular counsellor’s eyes.

Do you really want
The scales to fall from your eyes
One of these fine days?

A WORD ONCE GIVEN MUST BE KEPT

They went back to Yokohama on the seven o’clock train, the first. They didn’t bother too much about secrecy, sitting next to each other, although they didn’t talk. But then, there was no one else in the carriage apart from the vice-consul and the inspector. The second- and third-class carriages were crammed with clerks and shop assistants on their way to work in Yokohama, but it was too early for first-class passengers.

Asagawa dozed lightly for a while and then – oh, those nerves of steel! – fell into a deep, sweet sleep, even smacking his lips occasionally. Fandorin didn’t feel like sleeping. It was almost as if his body had completely renounced this trivial pastime. But something told the titular counsellor that there would be no more insomnia.

The medicine that would cure the patient of his painful condition was called ‘Bullcox’. Not that Erast Petrovich was thinking about the torment of sleepless nights at this moment, his mind was on something quite different, but at the same time a voice from somewhere in the wings kept whispering to his exhausted body: ‘Soon, you will rest soon’.

The titular counsellor’s reason, which existed independently of any voices, was concerned with a most important matter – Defining a Sequence of Logical Reasoning.

The sequence that emerged could not possibly have been more elegant.

So, at the head of the conspiracy to which the Napoleon of Japan had fallen victim, stood the Right Honourable Algernon Bullcox, agent of the government of Victoria, Empress of India and Queen of Great Britain.

The motivation for the plot was obvious:

To dispose of a ruler who strove to maintain the balance between the two Great Powers that were vying to seize control of the Pacific Ocean –England and Russia. That was one.

To bring to power the party of expansion, which would require a mighty fleet. Who would help in the forthcoming conquest of Korea? Naturally, the ruler of the waves, Britannia. That was two.

Bullcox could count on a great reward. Why, of course he could! As a result of the operation that he had successfully completed Japan would fall into the zone of British influence, followed by the whole of the Far East. That was three.

From the human point of view, it was also clear that Bullcox was capable of such a sordid, cynical undertaking.

He engaged in spying and did not try very hard to conceal the fact. That was one.

According to O-Yumi (and who could know this villain better than she did, thought Fandorin, stabbing himself in the heart), he was capable of any abominable infamy, he could even send assassins to kill a successful rival or take revenge on a woman who left him. That was two.

Of course, it was highly improbable that he had organised the conspiracy against Okubo with the approval of St James’s Palace, but he was an adventurer by nature, an ambitious man who would use any means to secure his own success. That was three.

And now, four. Prince Onokoji had said that the conspirators had a lot of money. But where would poor Satsuman samurai get money? Would they really have been able to reward Suga so generously for the artfulness that he had demonstrated? But the agent of the British crown had access to inexhaustible financial resources. The Right Honourable must have laughed heartily to himself when the high-society gossip-monger told him about the gift of the estate. Bullcox himself must have bought it and then ‘lost’ it to Suga at cards. Or if not himself, then he had acted through intermediaries – what difference did that make!

The course of his deductive reasoning was unwittingly interrupted by Asagawa, who suddenly snored blissfully in his sleep. Resting on his laurels, almost literally, thought Fandorin. Villainy had been punished, justice had triumphed, harmony had been restored. And the inspector’s sleep was not disturbed by any considerations of high politics. Or by the nightmarish events that had taken place two hours earlier in the department of police. The place must be in a fine uproar now. Or it would be very soon.

A cleaner or a zealous secretary, arriving before the start of office hours in order to tidy away a few papers, would glance into the boss’s office and see a sight that would make him feel quite unwell …

When the intendant named Bullcox, the inspector hissed something to the prisoner in Japanese. Flexing his jaw muscles, he explained his indignation to Fandorin:

‘He is an even greater scoundrel than I thought. At least the fanatics from Satsuma believed they were acting in the name of their Homeland, but this one knew they were mere pawns in a game planned by a foreigner!’

Suga bleated.

‘We can take out the
hami
now,’ said Erast Petrovich, who had still not recovered from his shock – he simply could not understand why this explanation had not occurred to him earlier.

Freed of the gag, the general spat and blurted out hoarsely to Asagawa:

‘And aren’t you a pawn in the hands of a foreigner?’ But then he came to his senses, remembering that he was completely in the inspector’s power, and changed his tone of voice. ‘I have kept my word. Now it is your turn. Give me a dagger.’

‘I don’t have a dagger,’ Asagawa said with a crooked grimace. ‘And if I did, I wouldn’t give it to you. I wouldn’t let you stain the noble steel with your filthy blood! Remember how you forced the hunchback to chew his tongue off? Now it is your turn. You’ve got sharp teeth, go on – if you have the courage. I shall enjoy watching.’

The intendant’s eyes narrowed in hatred and glittered with fire.

The vice-consul tried cautiously to bite the tip of his tongue and shuddered. Asagawa was cruel, and no mistake. He was testing Suga’s strength of character. If the intendant wavered, he would lose face. Then it would be possible to shake all sorts of things out of him.

None of them spoke. Then there was a strange stifled sound – it was Suga gulping.

No one was watching the door that led into the secret room, so when it slammed shut with a clang, they all started. Could twenty minutes really have gone by since the intendant had pressed the lever?

‘You don’t want to eat your own tongue,’ the inspector remarked smugly. ‘Then here is a new proposal. Look here …’ – he took a revolver out of the general’s pocket (Fandorin had not been mistaken, it was a cavalryman’s Hagström) and left one bullet in the cylinder. ‘Tell us who the other circles represent, and you won’t have to gnaw your tongue off.’

The glance that Suga cast at that revolver was beyond description. No Romeo had ever devoured his Juliet with such lust in his eyes, no shipwreck victim had ever gazed so longingly at a speck on the horizon. The titular counsellor was absolutely certain that the general would not be able to resist the temptation. He was certain – and he was mistaken.

On the previous occasion Erast Petrovich had been lucky – he had observed this grisly spectacle from a distance, but this time it all happened just two paces from him.

Suga gave an absolutely feral, inhuman roar, opened his mouth wide, thrust his fleshy, red tongue out as far as it would go and clamped his jaws together. There was a sickening crunch and Fandorin turned away, but even so he had feasted his eyes on the sight long enough for it to remain with him for the rest of his days.

The intendant took longer to die than Semushi. Fandorin realised now that the shock of the pain had been too much for the hunchback. But Suga had a strong heart, and he choked on his own blood. At first he swallowed it convulsively, then it streamed out over his chin and his chest. That probably lasted for a few minutes. And all this time the iron man didn’t groan even once.

After the wheezing ended and the suicide slumped limply in his bonds, Asagawa cut him free. The body slid down on to the floor and a red puddle started spreading out across the parquet.

The epitaph pronounced by the inspector was restrained and respectful.

‘A strong man. A genuine
akunin
. But the main
akunin
in this story is not Japanese, he is a foreigner. What a disgrace!’

Fandorin was feeling sick. He wanted to get away from this cursed place as quickly as possible, but they spent quite a lot more time there after that.

First they eliminated all signs of their own presence: they collected up the pieces of rope, straightened the portrait of the Mikado, found the bullet fired from Fandorin’s Herstal and dug it out.

From the European point of view it looked absolutely absurd: for some reason the head of the imperial police had come to his office in the middle of the night, sat down in a chair, bitten off his own tongue and died. Erast Petrovich could only hope that in Japanese terms it might appear less outlandish.

Then, on Asagawa’s insistence, they spent the best part of an hour tearing all the numerous dossiers into tiny scraps of paper. Only then did they finally leave, in the same way as they had entered, that is, via the window of the toilet.

The only part of the archive that they did not destroy was the ‘Okubo’ file. It contained the page with the coded diagram, the stolen reports and the three sheets of paper with the oath written in blood. In combination with the testimony of the witness, Prince Onokoji, who not only knew about Suga’s secret activities, but had connections with Bullcox, this was quite enough. Soon everyone would know why the intendant of police had done away with himself.

But before that the case had to be brought to a conclusion by finding evidence against the Englishman. If that could be managed, Britannia would suffer categorical disgrace, and Russian interests would be completely triumphant. This was a very grave matter – the resident English agent had organised the political assassination of a great man! It would probably lead to the severance of diplomatic relations.

If Bullcox wormed his way out of it and got away scot-free (there was really nothing to snag him with as yet), they would have to be satisfied with having exposed Suga. But that was already quite a lot.

Should he report to Doronin or wait a while? It was probably too soon. First he had to try to catch Bullcox by the tail, and that would probably require him to use methods that were not exactly diplomatic. And then, there was another circumstance, one that was quite insignificant from the viewpoint of high politics, but extremely important to Fandorin. It was precisely this delicate problem, of an entirely personal nature, that he was thinking through as he gazed out of the window at the paddy fields glinting in the sun.

Asagawa suddenly opened his eyes and said thoughtfully, as if he had never been asleep, but had also been immersed in analytical thinking:

‘You know, that scoundrel Onokoji deliberately sent us into a trap.’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘There was no file on Onokoji in the archive.’

Fandorin frowned.

‘You mean to say that the
shinobi
carried out their assignment in full? They got into the archive and stole the file of compromising material?’

‘If we were able to find the lever, the ninja must certainly have found it. They are far more experienced in such matters, and more cautious. If there were two of them, we must assume that they did not enter the secret room together, as we did, but one stayed on guard outside.

‘Then why did they not steal the entire archive? It could have been a powerful instrument of influence for them! Those secrets are worth huge amounts of money!’

The inspector looked at Fandorin in amazement.

‘Come now! The Stealthy Ones kill, steal and spy, but they do not engage in blackmail and extortion! That would contradict their traditions and code of honour.’

Yes, Erast Petrovich had forgotten that in Japan everybody, even the villains, always had some kind of code. There was something reassuring about that, somehow.

‘So Onokoji did get his f-file? Well, of course. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have spoken about Suga’s archive so calmly. He got what he wanted, but he didn’t wish to pay the Momochi clan for their work. He knew that the senior samurai would be held answerable, not him. The prince used the samurai and condemned him to death.’

‘There’s no point now in talking about the samurai,’ said Asagawa, waving his fist through the air. ‘Don’t you see? Onokoji knew we would fall into a trap, and he didn’t warn us. He was counting on Suga killing us! I swear I’ll shake the black soul out of that slimy scoundrel!’

The prince’s soul almost took leave of his body without any shaking, just as soon as he heard about the intendant’s death.

Lockston was still jangling the key to the cell, Asagawa was still waving his fist menacingly through the bars of the locked door, but the prince needed to be resuscitated. After the inspector’s first furious shouts (‘Surprised to see us? Did you think Suga would finish us off? It turned out the other way round!’) Onokoji had jumped up off the bunk, turned as white as chalk and collapsed in a dead faint.

‘Well, would you look at that?’ the sergeant said in amazement. ‘Bright and chirpy all night, he was, singing Parisian
chansonettes
. Boasting that he’d be free in the morning.’

‘Water,’ Asagawa said curtly.

They splashed water from the glass into the prisoner’s face, slapped him on the cheeks, and the scion of feudal lords came round. He started sobbing and his teeth started chattering.

‘Did you … Did you kill him? That’s it, then, I’m done for.’

The prince was trembling so violently that his head wobbled back and forth on his thin neck. And apparently it was not simply because the effect of the morphine had worn off – Onokoji was in a total panic. At first Fandorin thought he was afraid of Asagawa and vengeance for his treachery. But the titular counsellor soon realised that he was mistaken.