Fandorin 1-10

In the village of the accursed shinobis there was only one object of any interest to a connoisseur of female charm – seventeen-year-old Etsuko. She was no beauty, of course, but, as the saying went, in a swamp even a toad is a princess. Apart from her, the female population of the village of Kakusimura ^[xx]

(Masa had invented the name himself, because the shinobi didn’t call the village anything) consisted of the old witch Neko-chan (what a lovely little pussy-cat!), ^[xxi]

pock-faced Gohei’s pregnant wife, one-eyed Sae, and fifteen-year-old Nampopo. And two snot-nosed little girls of nine and eleven who didn’t even count.

Masa didn’t try to approach his chosen prey on the first day – he watched her from a distance, drawing up a plan of action. She was a fine girl, with qualities that made her interesting. Hard working, nimble, a singer. And it was interesting to wonder how the kunoichi – ninja women – were made down there. If she could do a jump with a triple somersault or run up a wall on to the roof (he’d seen that for himself), then what sort of tricks did she get up to in moments of passion? That would be something to remember and tell people about.

At first, of course, he had to find out whether she belonged to any of the men. The last thing he needed was to draw down the wrath of one of these devils.

Masa sat in Little Cat’s kitchen for an hour, praised her rice balls and found out everything he needed to know. There was a fiancй, his name was Ryuzo, a very nice boy, but he had been studying abroad for a year already.

So let him carry on studying.

Now Masa could get down to work.

He spent a couple of days getting friendly with the object. No languorous glances, no hints – Buddha forbid! She was pining without her fiancй, and he was far from home, among strangers, they were about the same age, so surely they had things to talk about?

He told her a lot of things about the wonders of Yokohama (fortunately, Etsuko had never been to the gaijin city). He lied a bit, of course, but only to make it more interesting. Gradually he worked his way round to the exotic bedroom habits of the gaijins. The girl’s eyes glinted and her little mouth opened halfway. Aha! She might be a shinobi, but she had real blood in her veins!

That finally convinced him that he would be successful and he moved on to the last stage but one – he started asking whether it was true that kunoichi women really had the right to do as they wished with their own bodies and the idea of being unfaithful to a husband or a fiancй did not even exist for them.

‘How can some little hole in your body be unfaithful? Only the soul can be unfaithful, and our souls are true,’ Etsuko answered proudly – the clever girl.

Masa had no interest at all in her soul. The little hole was quite enough for him. He whined a bit about never having hugged a girl – he was so very shy and unsure of himself.

‘All right, then, come to the crevice at midnight,’ Etsuko whispered. ‘And I’ll give you a hug.’

‘That would be very charitable of you,’ he said meekly, and start blinking very, very fast – he was so touched.

The place chosen for the rendezvous was absolutely perfect, all credit to the girl for that. At night there wasn’t a soul here, and it was a good hundred paces to the nearest house. They didn’t post sentries in Kakusimura – what for? On the other side of the crevices there were ‘singing boards’ under the earth: if anyone stepped on one, it started hooting like an eagle owl and it could be heard from very far away. That time when he and the master had climbed across the rope they’d had no idea that the village was ready to receive visitors.

With Etsuko everything happened quickly, even too quickly. There was no need to act like an inexperienced boy in order to inflame her passions more strongly – she came dashing out of the bushes so fast she knocked him off his feet, and a minute later she was already gasping, panting and screeching as she bounced up and down on Masa, like a cat scraping at a dog with its claws.

There wasn’t anything special about the kunoichi, she was just a girl like any other. Except that her thighs were as hard as stone – she squeezed him so hard, he would probably have bruises left on his hips. But she wasn’t inventive at all. Even Natsuko was more interesting.

Etsuko babbled something in a happy voice, stroked Masa’s stiff, short-trimmed hair and made sweet talk, but he couldn’t hide his disappointment.

‘Didn’t you like it?’ she asked in a crestfallen voice. ‘I know I never studied it… The jonin told me: “You don’t need to”. Ah, but do you know how good I am at climbing trees? Like a real monkey. Shall I show you?’

‘Go on, then,’ Masa agreed feebly.

Etsuko jumped up, ran across to the dead pine tree and clambered up the charred trunk, moving her hands and feet with incredible speed.

Masa was struck by a poetic idea: living white on dead black. He even wondered whether he ought to compose a haiku about a naked girl on a charred pine. He had the first two lines all ready – five syllables and seven:

The old black pine tree,

Trembling like a butterfly…

What next? ‘With a girl on it?’ Too blunt and direct. ‘See love soaring upwards’? That was six syllables, but it should be five.

In search of inspiration he rolled closer to the pine tree – he couldn’t be bothered to get up.

Suddenly Masa heard a strange champing sound above him. Etsuko dropped out of the tree with a groan and fell on to the ground two steps away from him. He froze in horror at the sight of a thick, feathered arrow-shaft sticking out of her white back below her left shoulder-blade.

He wanted to go dashing to her, to see whether she was alive.

Etsuko was alive. Without turning over or moving her head, she kicked Masa, so that he went rolling away.

‘Run…’ he heard her say in a muffled whisper.

But Masa didn’t run – his legs were trembling so badly, they probably wouldn’t have held up the weight of his body.

The night was suddenly full of rustling sounds. Dark spots appeared at the edge of the crevice – one, two, three. Black men climbed up on to the edge of the cliff at the point where the shinobi had their secret hoist. There were many of them, very many. Masa lay in the tall grass, looking at them, horror-struck, and he couldn’t move.

One of the black men walked over to where Etsuko was lying face down and turned her over on to her back with his foot. He leaned down, and a blade glinted in his hand.

Suddenly the girl sat up, there was a wheeze, and he was lying, but Etsuko was standing with a sword in her hand, surrounded on all sides by the mysterious newcomers. White among the black, Masa thought fleetingly.

The clash of metal, howls, and then the white figure disappeared, and the men in black were furiously hacking at something lying on the ground that crunched as they hit it.

Masa clearly heard a girl’s voice shout out:

‘Kongojyo!’

One of the killers came very close. He tore up a bunch of grass and started cleaning off his sword. Masa heard loud, sporadic breathing.

The pale light of the moon seeped through a thin cloud for a moment and Masa saw a hood with holes instead of eyes, a cartridge belt over a shoulder, a black jacket.

Don Tsurumaki’s men, that was who they were! They’d followed the shinobi’s example and covered their faces so that they wouldn’t show white in the darkness!

How had they managed to get past the ‘singing boards’? Surely they couldn’t have come through the underground passage? Who could have showed it to them?

Masa crawled on all fours into the undergrowth, jumped to his feet and ran.

The Black Jackets didn’t waste any time. He heard a muffled command behind him, and fallen pine needles started crunching under rapid footsteps.

He had to get to the houses quickly, to raise the alarm! The Don’s men wouldn’t bother to find out who was a shinobi and who wasn’t, they’d finish off everybody regardless.

When he had only twenty paces left to go to the first hut, Masa was unlucky – in the darkness he ran into a branch, tore his cheek and – worst of all – he couldn’t stop himself crying out.

The men behind him heard and realised they had been discovered.

‘TSUME-E-E!’ roared a commanding bass voice.

The response was a roar from many voices.

‘An attack! An attack!’ Masa roared as well, but shut his mouth almost immediately, realising that he was only exposing himself to unnecessary danger.

The attackers were roaring and tramping so loudly that the inhabitants of Kakusimura couldn’t help but hear them.

Now, if he wanted to live, he had to think very quickly. So Masa didn’t run towards the houses, he hid behind a tree.

Less than half a minute later a crowd of Black Jackets went rushing past, spreading out and forming into a half-moon in order to take in the whole width of the island.

Torches blazed into life, thrust into the ground along a line at intervals of five paces. The chain of fire cut across the entire forest, from one edge to the other.

‘Fire!’

Rapid, crackling salvoes of carbine fire. Masa could hear the bullets thudding into the wooden walls and the squeal of splinters flying out.

Ah, what a disaster! How could he save his master from this hell? The Black Jackets would riddle the first three houses with bullets now, and then they would set about Tamba’s home.

Masa dashed about between the pines in despair and saw that he couldn’t possibly slip through the brightly lit zone and the cordon.

A crunch of branches. A man running with a limp from the direction of the crevice. Black jacket, black hood – he must have fallen behind the others. Masa attacked him from the side, knocked him down with a single blow and then, to make sure, squeezed the fallen man’s neck with his knee and waited for it to crunch. He didn’t have to worry about the noise – all the shooting that was going on was deafening.

He pulled the trousers and jacket off the corpse and put them on. He covered his face with the hood – it was very helpful that the Don’s men had decided to wear such a useful item.

While he was still fiddling about, the shooting stopped. The wooden walls that had been riddled with bullets were covered in black dots, like the poppy-seed bun that Masa had given Netsuko as a treat. It was almost as bright as day, there were so many torches all around.

One by one the gunmen entered the houses, holding their carbines at the ready. Then they came back out – in twos, dragging dead bodies that they laid out on the ground. The commander leaned down, looking into the dead faces.

Masa counted nine big bodies and four little ones. There were two adults missing.

‘Tamba’s not here,’ the commander said loudly. ‘And the gaijin’s not here either. They’re in the house on the edge of the precipice.’

And he walked away, but not far, only a few steps.

Suddenly one of the bodies came to life. The man (Masa recognised affable, talkative Rakuda) arched up like a cat and jumped on to the commander’s back. A knife blade glinted, but the leader of the Black Jackets proved to be very adroit – he jerked his head to dodge the blow, threw himself backwards and started rolling about on the grass. Men dashed to help him from all sides, and a shapeless black octopus with arms and legs sticking out in all directions started writhing on the ground.

Taking advantage of the commotion, another body started moving, this time a little one. It was eight-year-old Yaichi. He rose halfway to his feet, staggered and then shook himself. Two Black Jackets tried to grab the boy, but he wriggled between their outstretched arms and scrambled up a tree in an instant.

‘Catch him! Catch him!’ his pursuers shouted. There was a rumble of shots.

Yaichi flew across to the next tree, and then the one after that. The branch he was holding broke off, smashed by a bullet, but he grabbed another one.

Meanwhile they had finished off Rakuda. Two Black Jackets were left lying on the ground. The others dragged the dead shinobi away and helped their commander to get up. He pushed their willing hands away angrily and pulled the hood off his head. A revolver glinted as he aimed the barrel at the boy skipping though the trees. The barrel described a short arc, spat out a gobbet of flame – and Yaichi came tumbling down like a stone.

Masa froze open-mouthed, astonished by the gunman’s accuracy and the gleam of his smoothly shaved head. He had seen this man before, only a few days earlier! The itinerant monk who had spent the night at the village hotel with Kamata’s ‘construction brigade’, that was who it was!

And everything was finally clear.

Don Tsurumaki was a prudent man. He hadn’t relied on the faithful but dull-witted Kamata. He had attached a spy to the brigade, a man who had watched everything and sniffed everything out without making himself known. He had seen the massacre on the mountain, noted where the entrance to the underground passage was, and the hoist… Neat work, no two ways about it!

The Monk (that was what Masa called the Black Jackets’ commander now) was obviously afraid that another dead ninja would come back to life. He pulled a short sword out of its scabbard and set to work. The blade rose thirteen times and fell thirteen times and a pyramid of severed heads rose up by the wall of the house. The Monk handled the sword deftly, he clearly had a lot of experience.

Before moving on to the concluding stage of the storm, the commander ordered his unit to form up in a line.

‘Our losses are small,’ said the Monk, walking along the line with a springy step. ‘The naked girl killed two, the dead man who came to life killed two more, one was hurt when he fell off the hoist. But the greatest danger lies ahead. We shall proceed strictly according to the plan drawn up by Mr Shirota. It’s a good plan, you’ve seen it. Mr Shirota assumes that the house of the werewolves’ leader is full of traps. And therefore – extreme caution. Not a single step without orders, is that clear?’ Suddenly he stopped, peering into the darkness. ‘Who’s that there? You, Ryuhei?’

Realising he had been spotted, Masa slowly stepped forward. What should he do? Walk over or take to his heels?

‘So you got up after all? Didn’t break any bones? Good man. Get back in line.’

Most of the Black Jackets had followed their commander’s example and taken off the hoods, but a few, Buddha be praised, had left their faces covered, and so no one suspected Masa; only the man next to him in the line squinted at him and nudged him in the side with his elbow – but he thought that must be a kind of greeting.

‘Twenty men cordon off the clearing,’ the Monk ordered. ‘Hold your carbines at the ready, stay awake. If one of the shinobi tries to break through, drop him on the spot. The others come with me, into the house. No crowding, in line, two by two.’

Masa didn’t want to join the cordon. He attached himself to the men who would go into the house, but he couldn’t get into the first row, only the third.

The plan of the storm had clearly been worked out in detail.

The long double column trotted to the clearing with the jonin’s wooden plank house standing on its edge. The twenty-man cordon took up position round the edge of the clearing and stuck torches into the ground.

The others stretched out into a long dark snake and moved forward.

‘Carbines on the ground!’ the commander ordered, keeping his eyes fixed on the house, which was maintaining a sinister silence. ‘Draw your daggers!’

He dropped back a little bit from the men in front and stopped, as if feeling uncertain.

He doesn’t want to stick his own neck out, Masa realised. And he’s right too. Rakuda (whose heroic death had probably raised him to the next level in the cycle of rebirth) had said that when there was danger, Tamba’s house became like a prickly hedgehog – there were some secret levers that had to be pressed for that. The inhabitants of the house had had plenty of time, so there would be lots of surprises in store for the Black Jackets. Masa remembered with a shudder how the floor had tilted under him that night and he had gone tumbling down into darkness.

The Monk was a cautious man, and there was no point in pushing forward too fast.

And then immediately, as if to confirm this idea, it started.

When one of the two men at the front was just a step away from the porch, he disappeared, as if the ground had opened and swallowed him up.

Or rather, there was no ‘as if’ about it – it did swallow him up. Masa had walked across that spot a hundred times, and he had no idea that there was a pit hidden under it.

There was a spine-chilling howl. The Black Jackets first shied away from the gaping hole, then swarmed round it. Masa stood on tiptoe and looked over someone’s shoulder. He saw a body pierced through by sharp stakes, still jerking about.

‘I only just stopped myself, right on the very edge!’ the survivor from the first row said in a trembling voice. ‘The amulet saved me. The goddess Kannon’s amulet!’

The others remained morosely silent.

‘Line up!’ the commander barked.

Skirting round the terrible pit, from which groans were still emerging, they started walking up on to the porch. The owner of the miraculous amulet held one hand out ahead of him, clutching a dagger, and pulled his head down into his shoulders. He passed the first step, the second, the third. Then he stepped timidly on to the terrace, and at that very instant a heavy section fell out of the thick beam framing the canopy. It smacked the man standing below across the the top of his head with a dull thud and he collapsed face down without even crying out. His hand opened and the amulet in its tiny brocade bag fell out.

The goddess Kannon is good for women and for peaceful occupations, thought Masa. For the affairs of men the god Fudo’s amulet is more appropriate.

‘Well, why have you stopped?’ shouted the Monk. ‘Forward!’

He ran fearlessly up on to the terrace, but stopped there and beckoned with his hand.

‘Come on, come on, don’t be such cowards.’

‘Who’s a coward?’ boomed a great husky fellow, pushing his way forward. Masa stepped aside to let the brave man past. ‘Right, now, let me through!’

He jerked the door open. Masa winced painfully, but nothing terrible happened.

‘Good man, Saburo,’ the commander said to the daredevil. ‘No need to take your shoes off, this isn’t a social call.’

The familiar corridor opened up in front of Masa: three doors on the right, three doors on the left, and one more at the end – with the little bridge into emptiness beyond it.

The hulking brute Saburo stamped his foot on the floor – again nothing happened. He stepped across the threshold, stopped and scratched the back of his head.

‘Where to first?’

‘Try the one on the right,’ ordered the Monk, also entering the corridor. The others followed, crowding together.

Before going in, Masa looked round. A long queue of Black Jackets was lined up on the porch, with their naked swords glittering in the crimson light of the torches. A snake with its head stuck into a tiger’s jaws, Fandorin’s servant thought with a shudder. Of course, he was for the tiger, heart and soul, but he himself was a scale on the body of the snake…

‘Go on!’ said the commander, nudging the valiant (or perhaps simply stupid) Saburo.

The hulk opened the first door on the right and stepped inside. Turning his head this way and that, he took one step, then another. When his foot touched the second tatami, something twanged in the wall. From the corridor Masa couldn’t see what had happened, but Saburo grunted in surprise, clutched at his chest and doubled over.

‘An arrow,’ he gasped in a hoarse voice, turning round.

And there it was, a rod of metal protruding from the centre of his chest.

The Monk aimed his revolver at the wall, but didn’t fire.

‘Mechanical,’ he murmured. ‘A spring under the floor…’

Saburo nodded, as if he was completely satisfied by this explanation, sobbed like a child and tumbled over on to his side.

Stepping over the dying man, the commander rapidly sounded out the walls with the handle of his gun, but didn’t find anything.

‘Move on!’ he shouted. ‘Hey, you! Yes, yes, you! Go!’

The soldier in a hood at whom the Monk was pointing hesitated only for a second before walking up to the next door. Muffled muttering could be heard from under the mask.

‘I entrust myself to the Buddha Amida, I entrust myself to the Buddha Amida…’ Masa heard – it was the invocation used by those who believed in the Way of the Pure Land.

It was a good prayer, just right for a sinful soul thirsting for forgiveness and salvation. But it was really astonishing that in the room which the follower of the Buddha Amida would have to enter there was a scroll hanging on the wall, with a maxim by the great Shinran: ^[xxii]

‘Even a good man can be resurrected in the Pure Land, even more so a bad man’. What a remarkable coincidence! Perhaps the scroll would recognise one of its own and save him?

It didn’t.

The praying man crossed the room without incident. He read the maxim and bowed respectfully. But then the Monk told him:

‘Take down the scroll! Look to see if there’s some kind of lever hidden behind it!’

There was no lever behind the scroll, but as he fumbled at the wall with his hand, the unfortunate man scratched himself on an invisible nail. He cried out, licked his bleeding palm and a minute later he was writhing on the floor – the nail had been smeared with poison.

Behind the third door was the prayer room. Right, now – what treat would it have in store for visitors? Not staying too close to the Monk (so that he wouldn’t call on him), but not too far away either (otherwise he wouldn’t see anything), Masa craned his neck.

‘Well, who’s next?’ the commander called and, without waiting for volunteers, he grabbed by the scruff of the neck the first man he could reach and pushed him forward. ‘Boldly now!’

Trembling all over, the soldier opened the door. Seeing an altar with a lighted candle, he bowed. He didn’t dare go in wearing his shoes – that would have been blasphemy. He kicked off his straw jori, stepped forward – and started hopping about on one leg, clutching his other foot in both hands.

‘Spikes!’ the Monk gasped.

He burst into the room (he was wearing stout gaijin boots) and dragged the wounded man out into the corridor, but the man was already wheezing and rolling his eyes up into their lids. The commander sounded out the walls in the prayer room himself. He didn’t find any levers or secret springs.

Back out in the corridor he shouted:

‘There are only four more doors! One of them will lead us to Tamba! Perhaps it’s that one!’ He pointed to the door that closed off the end of the corridor. ‘Tsurumaki-dono promised a reward to the first man to enter the old wolf’s den! Who wants to earn the rank of sergeant and a thousand yen into the bargain?’

There was no one who wanted to. An invisible boundary seemed to run across the corridor: in the section farther on there was plenty of space – the commander was standing there all on his lonesome; but in the first section there was a whole crowd of about fifteen men crammed close together, and more were piling in from the porch.

‘Ah, you chicken-hearts! I’ll manage without you!’

The Monk pushed the door aside and held out his hand with the pistol in it. Seeing the blackness, he started back, but immediately took a grip on himself.

He laughed.

‘Look at what you were afraid of! Emptiness! Well, there are only three doors left! Does anyone want to try his luck? No? All right…’

He opened the farthest door on the left. But he didn’t hurry inside; first he squatted down and waved his hand for them to bring him a lamp. He examined the floor. He struck the tatami with his fist and only then stepped on to it. Then he took another step in the same way.

‘A stick!’

Someone handed him a bamboo pole.

The Monk prodded at the ceiling and the wall. When a board in the corner gave out a hollow sound, he immediately opened fire – one, two, three shots roared out.

Three holes appeared in the light yellow surface. At first it seemed to Masa that the commander was being too cautious, but suddenly there was a creak, the wall swayed open and a man in the black costume of a ninja fell out face first.

There was a dark hollow in the wall – a secret cupboard.

Without wasting a second, the Monk switched the revolver to his left hand, pulled out his sword and hacked at the fallen man’s neck. He pulled off the mask and picked up the head by its pigtail.

Gohei’s pockmarked face glared at his killer with furious bulging eyes. Tossing the trophy into the corridor, right at Masa’s feet, the commander wiped a trickle of blood off his elbow and glanced cautiously into the cavity.

‘Aha, there’s something here!’ he announced eagerly.

He gestured impatiently to call over one of the soldiers who had just removed his hood.

‘Shinjo, come here! Take a look at what’s in there. Climb up!’

He folded his hands into a stirrup. Shinjo stepped on them with one foot and the upper half of his torso disappeared from view.

They heard a muffled howl: ‘A-a-a-a!’

The Monk quickly jumped aside and Shinjo came tumbling down like a sack. A steel star with sharpened edges was lodged in the bridge of his nose.

‘Excellent!’ said the commander. ‘They’re in the attic! You, you and you, come here! Guard the entrance. Don’t stick your noses in the hole any more, or else they’ll throw another shuriken. The important thing is not to let any shinobi get out this way. The rest of you, follow me! There has to be a way into the basement somewhere here as well.’

Masa knew how to get into the basement. The next room, the second on the right, had a cunning floor – you ended up in the basement before you could even sneeze. Now the man with the shaved head would finally get what he deserved.

But the Monk didn’t blunder here either. He didn’t barge straight in, like Masa, but squatted down again and examined the wooden boards for a long time. He prodded them with his pole, suddenly realised something and gave a grunt of satisfaction. Then he pressed down hard with his fist – and the floor swayed.

‘And there’s the basement!’ The commander chuckled. ‘Three of you stand at the door, and keep your eyes on this!’

The Black Jackets swarmed thickly round the last door. They slid it open and gazed expectantly at their cunning commander.

‘Ri-ight,’ he drawled, running a keen gaze across the bare walls. ‘What do we have here? Aha. I don’t like the look of that projection over there in the corner. What’s it needed for? It’s suspicious. Come on, then.’ Without looking, the Monk reached his hand backwards and grabbed Masa by the sleeve. ‘Go and sound it out.’

Oh, he really didn’t want to go and sound out that suspicious projection! But how could he disobey? And the Monk was egging him on too!

‘What are you hanging about for? Get a move on! Who are you? Ryuhei? Take that hood off, you don’t need it here, it just stops you looking at things properly.’

I’m done for anyway, thought Masa, and pulled off the hood – he was standing with his back to the Black Jackets and their commander.

He prayed silently: Tamba-sensei, if you’re looking through some cunning little crack right now, don’t think I’m a traitor. I came to save my master. Just in case, he winked at the suspicious wall, as if to say: It’s me, I’m one of you.

‘That’s not Ryuhei,’ he heard someone say behind him. ‘Ryuhei doesn’t have a haircut like that, does he?’

‘Hey, who are you? Right, turn round!’ the Monk ordered.

Masa took two rapid steps forward. He couldn’t take a third – the tatami closest to the suspicious projection was false: just straw, with nothing underneath it. With a howl of despair, Masa tumbled through the floor.

A strip of metal glinted right in front of him, but no blow followed.

‘Masa!’ a familiar voice whispered. Then some Russian words: ‘Ya chut ne ubil tebya!’

The master! Alive! Pale, with his forehead contracted into a frown. A dagger in one hand and a little revolver in the other.

Midori-san was beside him – in black battle costume, only without a mask.

‘We can’t stay here any longer. Let’s leave!’ the mistress said, then adding something in the gaijin language, and all three of them dashed away from the rectangular hole with gentle yellow light pouring down through it.

In the very corner of the basement there was a black shape that looked like some kind of chute, and Masa made out two jute ropes in it – that must have been the projection that had seemed suspicious to the Monk.

The master took hold of one of the ropes and went flying upwards as if by magic.

‘Now you!’ Midori-san told him.

Masa grabbed the rough jute and it pulled him up towards the ceiling. It was absolutely dark and a little cramped, but the ascent was over in just half a minute.

First Masa saw a wooden floor, then the rope pulled him through a hatch up to his waist and after that he scrambled out by himself.

He looked round and realised he had ended up in the attic. He saw the sloping pitches of the roof on both sides of him, with pale light seeping in through the wooden grilles of the windows.

After blinking so that he could see better in the semi-darkness, Masa made out three figures: one tall (that was the master), one short (Tamba) and one middle-sized (the red-faced ninja Tanshin, who was like the sensei’s senior deputy). Midori soared up out of the hatch and the wooden lid slammed shut.

Apparently all the surviving inhabitants of the village of Kakusimura were gathered here.

The first thing to do was look to see what was happening outside. Masa moved over to the window with glimmers of scarlet light dancing in it and pressed his face to it.

A fiery border of torches ran round the house in a half-circle, from cliff-edge to cliff-edge. Loitering between the tongues of flame were dark silhouettes with guns held at the ready. There was no point in sticking their noses out that way, that was clear.

Masa ran across to the other window, but that way was really bad – there was just the black yawning abyss.

So where did that leave them? A precipice on one side and guns on the other. The sky up above and down below… In the far corner of the attic there was a yellow square of light in the floor – the hatch discovered by the Monk in the third room on the left. There were Black Jackets in there with naked daggers. So they couldn’t go down there either.

But what about all the way down, into the basement?

Masa ran over to the lifting device and opened the hatch slightly – the one he had clambered out of only a couple of minutes earlier.

Down below he could hear the tramping of feet and a buzz of voices – the enemy was already getting up to his tricks in the basement.

That meant they would soon reach the attic too.

It was all over. It was impossible to save the master.

Well then, it was a vassal’s duty to die with him. But first to render his master a final service: help him leave this life with dignity. In a hopeless situation, when a man was surrounded on all sides by enemies, the only thing left was to deprive the enemies of the pleasure of seeing your death agony. Let them have nothing but the indifferent corpse, and your dead face gazing at them with superior contempt.

What method could he suggest to his master? If he was Japanese, it would be quite clear. He had a dagger, and there was more than enough time for a decent seppuku. Tanshin had a short, straight sword hanging at his side, so the master would not be left writhing in agony. As soon as he touched his stomach with the dagger, faithful Masa would cut his head off.

But gaijins didn’t commit seppuku. They liked to die from gunpowder.

So that would be it.

Wasting no time, Masa went over to the jonin, who was whispering about something with his daughter, while at the same time doing something quite incomprehensible: inserting sticks of bamboo one into the other.

After apologising politely for interrupting the family conversation, Masa said:

‘Sensei, it is time for my master to leave this life. I wish to help him. I have been told that for some reason the Christian religion forbids suicide. Please translate for my master that I would consider it an honour to shoot him in the heart or the side of the head, whichever he desires.’

Then the master himself came across to him. He waved his revolver and said something. The master’s face was sombre and resolute. He must have had the same idea.

‘Explain to him that he shouldn’t open fire,’ Tamba told his daughter, speaking rapidly in Japanese. ‘He has only seven cartridges. Even if he doesn’t miss once and shoots seven Black Jackets, it won’t change anything. They’ll take fright, stop the search and fire the house. They haven’t done that so far because they want to present the Don with my body and they’re hoping to find some secret caches. But if they’re badly scared, they’ll set the house on fire. Tell him I asked you to translate because my English is too slow. Take him to one side, distract him. I need another minute. Then act according to our agreement.’

What agreement was that? What did Tamba need a minute for?

While Midori-san was translating what Tamba had said to the master, Masa kept his eyes fixed on the jonin, who finished fiddling with the bamboo sticks and starting shoving them into a narrow kind of case with a large piece of black cloth attached to it.

What weird sort of device was this?

A flag, it’s a flag, Masa guessed, and suddenly everything was clear.

The leader of the shinobi wanted to leave this life in beautiful style, with the flag of his clan unfurled. That was why he was spinning things out.

‘Is that the Momochi banner?’ Masa whispered to Tanshin, who was standing close by.

Tanshin shook his head.

‘Then what is it?’

The rude shinobi left the question unanswered.

Tamba picked up the cloth with the bamboo sticks inserted in it, threw it across his shoulders and belted it on, and it became clear that it wasn’t a flag at all, but something like a wide cloak.

Then the jonin held out his hand without speaking and Tanshin put the naked sword in it.

‘Farewell,’ said the jonin.

The shinobi answered with a word that Masa had heard once before that night.

‘Kongojyo.’ And he bowed solemnly.

Then Tamba walked out into the middle of the attic, pulled a string on his neckband, and the strange cloak folded up, fitting close around his body.

‘What does the sensei intend to do?’ Masa asked Tanshin.

‘Look down there,’ Tanshin muttered gruffly, then went down on all fours and pressed his face to the floor.

So Masa had to do the same.

The floor turned out to have observation slits in it, through which it was possible to observe the corridor and all the rooms.

There were Black Jackets scurrying about everywhere, and the Monk’s head was gleaming in the centre of the corridor.

‘Haven’t you found anything?’ he roared, leaning down towards a hole in the floor. ‘Sound out every siaku! ^[xxiii]

There must be hiding places!’

Lifting his head up from the slit, Masa glanced at Tamba – and just in time.

The jonin pressed some kind of lever with his foot and yet another hatch opened, located above the corridor. The old man jumped down, as straight as a spear.

Masa stuck his nose against the floor again, in order not to miss anything.

Ah, what a sight it was!

The jonin landed between the Monk and two Black Jackets. They just gaped open-mouthed, but the tricky man with the shaved head jerked to one side and pulled his revolver out of his belt. Ah, but what could he do against Tamba! A short, easy stroke of the sword and the glittering head went tumbling across the floor, and blood spurted out of the severed neck. Without turning round, the old shinobi flung his left hand out backwards and gently touched the nose of one of the soldiers: the soldier fell woodenly, without bending, and crashed to the floor. The second man squatted down and covered his head with his hands, and Tamba didn’t touch him.

He leaned forward slightly and then ran, slowly at first, but picking up speed all the time, towards the wide-open door with the precipice beyond it. A whole crowd of pursuers dashed after him, shouting and yelling.

Masa was in ecstasy. What a fine idea! To take a final stand on the little bridge above that abyss. First, no one would attack from behind and, secondly, it was so beautiful! And then these Black Jackets didn’t have any guns, they had been left outside. Oh, old Tamba would really pulverise them right at the end!

He heard a rustling sound beside him. It was Tanshin jumping to his feet and dashing to the window. He wants to see his master’s final battle, Masa realised, and dashed after him as fast as he could.

The little bridge was clearly visible through the wooden grille. The moon peeped out, and the wooden planking turned silver against the black precipice.

There was the jonin, running out on to the little bridge at a furious pace, the sides of his cloak jutting out like the wings of a bat. Still running, Tamba pushed off hard with his foot and jumped into the precipice.

But what about the final battle? Masa almost cried out.

He could have killed a dozen or two enemies and then dropped over the edge of the abyss like a stone.

But Tamba didn’t fall like a stone!

The Black Jackets crowding on the little bridge howled in horror, and fine drops of cold sweat stood out on Masa’s forehead too. And for good reason…

The leader of the Momochi clan had turned into a bird!

The huge black hawk soared above the valley, cutting through the moonlight and slowly descending.

Masa was brought round by a slap on his shoulder.

‘Now we have to act quickly,’ said Tanshin. ‘Before they can recover their wits.’

Midori-san and the master were already clambering through a hatch on to the roof. He had to catch up with them.

Tiles grated under his feet and a fresh wind blew into his face. Masa turned towards the precipice for another glimpse of the magical bird, but it wasn’t there any more – it had flown away.

They crawled the last few steps on their stomachs so that the Black Jackets in the cordon wouldn’t see them.

They needn’t have been so cautious – the torches were burning in the clearing, but the sentries had disappeared.

‘Where are they?’ Masa asked in a whisper.

He guessed the answer himself: they had all gone dashing into the house. But of course! The commander had been killed, the head ninja had turned into a hawk. If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would never have believed it.

There was no cordon, but what good was that to them? If they jumped down, they’d break their legs, it was four ken ^[xxiv]

here. But Midori-san waved her hand just before the ridge of the roof and a gentle ringing sound filled the emptiness. A thin, transparent cable was stretched from the house out into the darkness. Midori-san took off her belt and threw it over the cable, tied a knot and showed the master how to put his elbows through it. But she herself managed without a strap – she just took hold with her hands, pushed off and soared over the clearing in a single sweep. The master didn’t waste any time either: he took a firm hold of the belt and flew off, setting the air rustling.

It was Masa’s turn. Tanshin prepared the strap for him in a second and pushed him in the back.

Rushing through space above the brightly lit clearing and the blazing flames was scary but enjoyable. Masa barely managed to stop himself whooping in delight.

The flight could have ended better, though. The trunk of a pine tree came flying towards him out of the darkness and if the master hadn’t grabbed his servant by the arms, Masa would have been flattened. As it was, he hit his forehead hard enough to set sparks flying.

There was a small wooden platform attached to the tree, and he had to climb down from it by feeling for branches with his foot.

As soon as he jumped down on to the ground, Masa saw that Tanshin had stayed on the roof – from here, on the other side of the clearing, his black silhouette was clearly visible.

There was a glint of steel, and something rustled in the air. Midori-san picked up the transparent rope and pulled it towards herself.

‘Why did he cut the cable?’ Masa exclaimed.

‘They’ll climb up on the roof, see the cable and guess everything,’ the mistress replied briefly. ‘And Tanshin will jump down.’

As soon as she said it, men climbed out on to the roof from below, a lot of men. They saw the shinobi poised on the very edge, started clamouring and ran towards him.

But Tanshin huddled down, jumped up, turned over in the air, and a moment later he was down below. He rolled across the ground like a ball and jumped to his feet.

But they were already running towards him out of the house.

‘Quickly! Quickly!’ Masa whispered, squeezing his fists tight.

The ninja reached the middle of the clearing in a few bounds, but he didn’t run into the forest – he stopped.

He doesn’t want to lead his pursuers to us, Masa guessed.

Tanshin pulled a torch out of the ground, then another, and rushed at his enemies. The Black Jackets first recoiled from the two furiously swirling tongues of flame, but then immediately closed back round the shinobi.

Someone’s clothing burst into flames and someone else ran off howling, trying to beat the flames off their burning hair. The fire swirled about above the crowd, stinging, scattering sparks.

They had to get away from there as quickly as possible, but Masa was still watching the beautiful way Tanshin was dying. A fiery death framed in glittering sword blades – could anything possibly be more beautiful?

The master pulled Midori-san into the thicket and pointed in the direction of the crevice – he must be pointing towards the hoist.

Masa had to explain to the bird-man’s daughter that they couldn’t get away through the underground passage. The Monk must have left sentries at the bottom of the crevice: they wouldn’t let anyone get down – they’d shoot them.

‘Better to sit it out here, in the forest,’ Masa concluded.

But Midori-san didn’t agree with him.

‘No. The Black Jackets have let my father get away, and now they have to find your master at any cost. They won’t dare report to the Don without his head. When they finish searching the house, they’ll start combing the forest again.’

‘What can we do?’

The mistress was going to answer, but then the master butted into this important conversation at just the wrong moment.

He pulled Masa aside and said in his broken Japanese:

‘Lead away, Midori-san. You. Trust. I here.’

Oh no! Masa didn’t even listen. He objected gruffly:

‘How can I lead her away? I’m not Tamba, I can’t fly through the sky.’

He flapped his arms like wings to demonstrate but the master, of course, didn’t understand. How could Masa possibly explain anything to him when he had no language?

The Black Jackets flocked round Tanshin’s body, arguing about something in loud voices. Many of them had been killed, including the commander, but there were even more left. Thirty men? Forty?

Masa had always been good at mental arithmetic, and he started counting.

The master had seven bullets in his little revolver. Masa could kill three. Or four – if he was lucky. Midori-san was a ninja – she’d probably polish off ten.

How many did that make?

Midori-san prevented him from finishing his calculation.

‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘My father will come back for you.’

‘Are you really going away, mistress?’

She didn’t answer and turned to the master.

He also asked something in a tense, halting voice.

She didn’t answer him either. At least, not in words.

She stroked his cheek, then his neck. A fine time she’d chosen for lovey-doving! A woman was always a woman after all, even if she was a ninja.

Midori-san’s hand slipped round to the back of the master’s head, the white fingers suddenly closed firmly together – and his round gaijineyes turned even rounder in amazement. The master sat down on the ground, slumping back against a tree trunk.

She had killed him. The accursed witch had killed him.

With a fierce growl, Masa aimed the fatal kubiori blow at the traitor: it should have ripped her scurvy throat out, but a strong hand seized his wrist.

‘He’s alive,’ the shinobi woman said quickly. ‘He simply can’t move.’

‘But why?’ hissed Masa, wincing in pain. What a grip!

‘He wouldn’t have let me do what must be done.’

‘And what is that?’

She let go of him, realising that he would hear her out.

‘Go into the house. Go down into the basement. There’s a barrel of gunpowder there in a secret place. The charge is calculated to make the house collapse inwards, crushing everyone in it.’

Masa thought for a moment.

‘But how will you get into the house?’

‘His strength will return in an hour,’ Midori-san said instead of answering. ‘Stay with him.’

Then she leaned down to the master and whispered something in his ear in gaijin language.

And that was all – she went out into the clearing and walked towards the house with a light stride.

They didn’t notice her straight away, but when they spotted the figure in the black, close-fitting ninja costume, they were startled.

Midori-san raised her empty hands and shouted.

‘Mr Tsurumaki knows me! I am Tamba’s daughter! I will show you his secret hiding place!’

The Black Jackets swarmed round her and started searching her. Then the entire crowd moved towards the porch and went into the house. Not a single soul was left outside.

The distance was only about thirty paces, Masa suddenly realised. If there was an explosion, wreckage would come showering down. He had to drag the master farther away.

He put his arms round the motionless body and dragged it across the ground.

But he hadn’t carried him very far, only a few steps, when the earth shook and his ears were deafened.

Masa turned round.

Momochi Tamba’s house collapsed neatly, as if it had gone down on its knees. First the walls caved in, then the roof swayed and came crashing down and broke in half, sending dust flying in all directions. It was suddenly completely light all around and a blast of hot air hit him in the face.

The servant leaned over to protect the body of his master and saw tears flowing out of the wide-open eyes.

The woman had deceived him. The master did not come round in an hour, or even in two.

Masa went to look at the heap of rubble several times. He dug up an arm in a black sleeve, a leg in a black trouser leg, and also a close-cropped head without a lower jaw. He didn’t find a single person alive.

He came back several times and shook the master to make him wake up. The master wasn’t actually unconscious, but he just lay there without moving, looking at the sky. At first the tears kept running down his face, then they stopped.

And not long before dawn Tamba appeared – he simply came through the forest from the direction of the crevice, as if everything was perfectly normal.

He said he had been on the other side and killed the sentries. There were only six of them.

‘But why didn’t you fly here through the sky, sensei?’ Masa asked.

‘I’m not a bird, to go flying through the sky. I flew down off the cliff on wings made of cloth, a man can learn to do that,’ the cunning old man explained, but, of course, Masa didn’t believe him.

‘What happened here?’ asked the sensei, looking at the master lying on the ground and the ruins of the house. ‘Where’s my daughter?’

Masa told him what had happened and where his daughter was.

The jonin knitted his grey eyebrows together but, of course, he didn’t cry – he was a ninja.

He said nothing for a long time, then he said:

‘I’ll get her out myself.’

Masa also said nothing for a while – for as long as was required by consideration for a father’s feelings – and then he expressed concern about his master’s strange condition. He enquired cautiously whether Midori-san could possibly have tried too hard and whether the master would now be paralysed for ever.

‘He can move,’ Tamba replied after taking another look at the man on the ground. ‘He just doesn’t want to. Let him stay like that for a while. Don’t touch him. I’ll go and rake through the rubble. And you cut some firewood and build a funeral pyre. A big one.’

I could sit watching,

Watch it till the break of dawn -

HE DIDN’T ANSWER

Fandorin lay on the ground and looked at the sky. At first it was almost black, lit up by the moon. Then the highlighting disappeared and the sky turned completely black, but seemingly not for long. Its colour kept changing: it became greyish, acquired a reddish glaze and started turning blue.

While Midori’s final words were still ringing in his ears (‘Farewell, my love. Remember me without sadness’) – and that echo lingered for a long, long time – tears flowed unceasingly from benumbed Erast Petrovich’s eyes. Gradually, however, the echo faded away and the tears dried up. The titular counsellor simply lay on his back, not thinking about anything, observing the behaviour of the sky.

When grey clouds crept across it, crowding out the blue, Tamba’s face leaned down over the man on the ground. Perhaps the old joninhad appeared earlier, Fandorin wasn’t entirely sure about that. But in any case, until this moment Tamba had not attempted to shut out the sky.

‘That’s enough,’ he said. ‘Now get up.’

Erast Petrovich got up. Why not?

‘Let’s go.’

He went.

He didn’t ask the old man any questions – he couldn’t care less about anything. But Tamba starting talking anyway. He said he had sent Masa to Tokyo. Masa had been very reluctant to leave his master, but it was necessary to summon Tamba’s nephew, a student in the faculty of medicine. Dan was the only one left, if you didn’t count the two who were studying abroad. They would come too, although not soon, of course. The Momochi clan had suffered grievous losses, it would have to be restored. And before that Tamba had to settle accounts with Don Tsurumaki.

The titular counsellor listened indifferently. None of this interested him.

In the clearing beside the ruined house a huge stack of firewood had been piled up, with another, smaller stack beside it. On the first stack there were bodies wrapped in black rags packed close together in three rows. Something white and narrow was lying on the second one.

Fandorin didn’t really look very closely. When you’re standing up it’s awkward to tilt your head back to look at the sky, so now he was mostly just examining the grass at his feet.

‘Your servant spent several hours chopping and stacking the wood,’ said Tamba. ‘And we carried the dead together. They are all here. Most of them have no heads, but that is not important.’

He walked up to the first stack of wood, bent over in a low bow and did not straighten up for a long, long time. Then he lit a torch and touched it to the wood, which flared up immediately – it must have been sprayed with some kind of combustible liquid.

Watching the fire was better than watching the grass. It kept changing its colour all the time, like the sky, and it moved, but still stayed in the same place. Fandorin looked at the flames until the bodies started moving. One dead man squirmed as if he had decided to try sitting up. That was unpleasant. And there was a smell of scorched flesh.

The titular counsellor first turned away, then walked off to the side.

The fire hissed and crackled. But Erast Petrovich stood with his back to it and didn’t turn round.

After some time Tamba came over to him.

‘Don’t keep silent,’ he said. ‘Say something. Otherwise the ki will find no exit and a lump will form in your heart. You could die like that.’

Fandorin didn’t know what ki was and he wasn’t afraid of dying, but he did as the old man asked – why not? He said:

‘It’s hot. When the wind blows this way, it’s hot.’

The jonin nodded approvingly.

‘Good. Now your heart won’t burst. But it is encrusted with ice, and that is also dangerous. I know a very good way to melt ice that shackles the heart. It is vengeance. You and I have the same enemy. You know who.’

Don Tsurumaki, the titular counsellor said in his head, and listened to his own voice – nothing inside him stirred.

‘That won’t change anything,’ he said out loud.

Tamba nodded again.

Neither of them spoke for a while.

‘You know, I found her,’ the old man said quietly a minute later, or perhaps it was an hour. ‘I had to rake through the beams and the planks, but I found her. She’s there, look.’

And he pointed to the second pyre.

That was when Erast Petrovich realised what it was lying there, covered with white material. He started shaking. It was impossible to stop the shuddering, it got stronger and stronger with every second.

‘She’s my daughter. I decided to bury her separately. Come, you can say goodbye.’

But the titular counsellor didn’t move from the spot – he just shook his head desperately.

‘Don’t be afraid. Her body is shattered, but I have covered it. And half of her face survived. Only don’t go close.’

Tamba didn’t wait, but set off towards the pyre first. He threw back the corner of the cover and Fandorin saw Midori’s profile. White, slim, calm – and as beautiful as in life.

Erast Petrovich dashed towards her, but the jonin blocked his way.

‘No closer!’

Why not? Why not?

The titular counsellor tossed Tamba aside like a dry twig, but the old man grabbed him at a slant round the waist.

‘Don’t! She wouldn’t have wanted it!’

The damned old man was tenacious and Erast Petrovich couldn’t move another step farther forward. He went up on tiptoe to see more than just the profile.

And he saw.

The other half of her face was black and charred, like some terrible African mask.

Fandorin recoiled in horror and Tamba shouted angrily:

‘Why do you shrink away? Dead ninjas have no faces, but she still has half of one. Because Midori had become only a half-ninja – and that’s because of you!’ The jonin’s voice shook. He lit another torch. ‘But never mind. Fire purges everything. Watch. Her body will bend and unbend in the tongues of purifying flame and then crumble into ash.’

But Erast Petrovich didn’t want to watch her poor body writhing. He strode off towards the forest, gulping in air with his mouth.

Something had happened to his lungs. The air didn’t fill his chest. The small, convulsive breaths were excruciating.

Why, oh why had he not listened to Tamba! Why had he gone up close to the pyre? She had wanted to part beautifully, following all the rules, so that her tender face and her words of farewell would remain in her beloved’s memory. But now – and he knew this for certain – everything would be overshadowed by a black-and-white mask: one half indescribably beautiful, the other half the very incarnation of horror and death.

But what was this that had happened to his lungs? His breaths had become short and jerky. And it wasn’t that he couldn’t breathe in – on the contrary, he couldn’t breathe out. The poisoned air of this accursed morning had stuck in his chest and absolutely refused to come back out.

‘Your skin is blue,’ said Tamba, coming up to him.

The old man’s face was calm, even sleepy somehow.

‘I can’t breathe,’ Fandorin explained abruptly.

The jonin looked into his eyes and shook his head.

‘And you won’t be able to. You need to let the bad energy out. Otherwise it will suffocate you. You have to shatter the ice that has gripped your heart so tightly.’

He’s talking about the Don again, Erast Petrovich realised.

‘All right. I’ll go with you. It’s not very likely to warm my heart, but perhaps I’ll be able to breathe again.’

Behind the titular counsellor’s back the flames raged and roared, but he didn’t look round.

‘I have no weaknesses any more,’ said the jonin. ‘Now I shall become a genuine Tamba. You will also become stronger. You are young. There are very many good women in the world, far more than there are good men. Women will love you, and you will love them.’

Erast Petrovich explained to him:

‘I mustn’t love anybody. My love brings disaster. I cannot love. I cannot love.’

Tamba didn’t answer.

Nothing is worse than

When someone knows everything

But will not answer

A POSTMAN

They set out for Yokohama at night, Fandorin on his tricycle, Tamba running. The tricyclist turned his pedals smoothly and powerfully, but soon fell behind – the ninja moved faster, and he didn’t have to stop to tauten a chain or negotiate a stony patch. They hadn’t actually arranged to travel together, merely agreed a meeting place: in the Bluff, on the hill that overlooked Don Tsurumaki’s house.

Erast Petrovich immersed himself completely in the rhythm of travelling, thinking of nothing but breathing correctly. Breathing was still as difficult as ever for him, but otherwise the titular counsellor felt a lot better than he had during the day. The movement helped. It was as if he had been transformed from a man into a chain-transmission and ball-bearing mechanism. His soul was filled, not so much with peace, as with a certain blessed emptiness, without any thoughts or feelings. If he could have had his way, he would have carried on like this through the sleeping valley until the end of his life, never feeling tired.

There really was no tiredness. Before setting out, Tamba had made Fandorin swallow kikatsu-maru, an ancient food that ninjas took with them as rations for long journeys. It was a small, almost tasteless ball moulded out of powder: grated carrot, buckwheat flour, yam and some cunning root or other. The mixture was supposed to be aged for three years, until all the moisture evaporated. According to Tamba, two or three of these little balls were enough to prevent a grown man feeling any hunger or fatigue all day long. And instead of a bottle of water, Erast Petrovich had been given a supply of suikatsu-maru – three tiny pellets of sugar, malt and the flesh of marinated plums.

And there was one other present, which was obviously supposed to inflame the thirst for vengeance in Fandorin’s indifferent breast: a formal photograph of Midori. The photo seemed to have been taken at the time when she was working in a brothel. Looking out at the titular counsellor from the clumsily coloured portrait was a china doll in a kimono, with a tall hairstyle. He stared at this image for a long time, but didn’t recognise Midori in it. And her beauty had disappeared somehow as well. Erast Petrovich thought abstractedly that genuine beauty was impossible to capture with the camera lens: it was too vital, too anomalous and mercurial. Or perhaps the problem was that genuine beauty was not perceived with the eyes, but in some other way.

The journey from Yokohama to the mountains had taken two days. But Erast Petrovich trundled back in five hours. He didn’t take a single break, but he wasn’t tired at all – no doubt owing to the magical maru.

To get into the Bluff, Fandorin needed to go straight on towards the racecourse, but instead of that he steered his vehicle to the left, towards the river, beyond which lay the crowded roofs of the trading quarter, wreathed in the morning mist.

The titular counsellor raced across the Nisinobasi bridge into the straight streets of the Settlement, and found himself, not on the hill where Tamba was no doubt already tired of waiting for him, but on the promenade, in front of a building with the Russian tricolour flying over it.

Erast Petrovich had not changed his route out of any absentmindedness resulting from the shock that he had suffered. There was no absentmindedness at all. On the contrary, the consequence of the frozen state of his feelings and the hours of mechanical movements was that the titular counsellor’s brain had started to function with the direct, linear precision of an adding machine. Wheels whirled, levers clicked and out popped the answer. In his normal condition Fandorin might possibly have over-intellectualised and produced some fancy construction with bells on, but now, while the non-participation of his emotions was absolute, his plan came out amazingly simple and clear.

Erast Petrovich had called round to the consulate or, rather, to his own apartment, on a matter relating directly to his arithmetically precise plan.

As he walked past the bedroom, he averted his gaze (the instinct of self-preservation prompted him to do that), turned on the light in the study and started rummaging through the books. Methodically picking up a volume, leafing through it and dropping it on the floor.

While doing this he muttered unintelligibly under his breath:

‘Edgar Allan Poe? Nerval? Schopenhauer?’

He was so absorbed by this mysterious activity that he didn’t hear the quiet footsteps behind him.

Suddenly a strident, nervous voice shouted:

‘Don’t move or I’ll shoot!’

Consul Doronin was standing in the doorway of the study, wearing a Japanese dressing gown and holding a revolver in his hand.

‘It is I, Fandorin,’ the titular counsellor said calmly, glancing round for no more than a second before continuing to rustle the pages. ‘Hello, Vsevolod Vitalievich.’

‘You!’ gasped the consul, without lowering his weapon (owing to surprise, one must assume). ‘I saw a light in your windows and the door standing wide open. I thought it was thieves, or something worse… Oh Lord, you’re alive! Where on earth did you get to? You’ve been gone for a whole week! I already… But where’s your Japanese servant?’

‘In Tokyo,’ Fandorin replied briefly, dropping a work by Proudhon and taking up a novel by Disraeli.

‘And… and Miss O-Yumi?’

The titular counsellor froze with the book in his hands, totally overwhelmed by this simple question.

Yes indeed, where was she now? After all, it was impossible for her not to be anywhere at all. Had she migrated to other flesh, in accordance with the Buddhist teachings? Or gone to heaven, where there was a place waiting for all that was truly beautiful? Or gone to hell, which was the right place for sinners?

‘… I don’t know,’ he replied after a long pause, at a loss.

The tone of voice in which this was said was enough to prevent Vsevolod Vitalievich from asking his assistant any more about his lover. If Erast Petrovich had been in his normal condition, he would have noticed that the consul himself looked rather strange: he didn’t have his habitual spectacles, his eyes were blazing excitedly and his hair was dishevelled.

‘What of your expedition to the mountains? Did you discover Tamba’s lair?’ Doronin asked, but without seeming particularly interested.

‘Yes.’

Another book went flying on to the heap.

‘And what then?’

The question was left unanswered, and once again the consul did not persist. He finally lowered his weapon.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘It’s just that I put something away and I c-can’t remember where,’ Fandorin said in annoyance. ‘Perhaps in Bulwer-Lytton?’

‘Do you know what an incredible stunt Bukhartsev pulled while you were away?’ the consul asked with a brief laugh. ‘That brute wrote a complaint about you, and he actually sent it to the Third Section. The day before yesterday a coded telegram arrived, with the signature of the chief of gendarmes himself, Adjutant General Mizinov: “Let Fandorin act as he considers necessary”. Bukhartsev is totally annihilated. You’re the cock of the walk now, as far as the ambassador is concerned. The poor baron was so frightened, he even proposed you for a decoration.’

But this joyful news entirely failed to engage the titular counsellor’s interest; in fact he was beginning to demonstrate increasing signs of impatience.

It was a most singular conversation, with the two men hardly even listening to each other: each was preoccupied with his own thoughts.

‘I’m so very glad that you have come back!’ Vsevolod Vitalievich exclaimed. ‘And today of all days! Now that is a genuine sign of destiny!’

At that point the titular counsellor finally tore himself away from his search, looked at the consul a little more closely and realised that he was obviously not his usual self.

‘What has happened t-to you. Your cheeks are flushed.’

‘Flushed? Really?’ exclaimed Doronin, clutching at one cheek in embarrassment. ‘Ah, Fandorin, a miracle has happened. My Obayasi is expecting a child! The doctor told us today – there’s no doubt about it! I resigned myself long ago to the idea of never being a father, and suddenly…’

‘Congratulations,’ said Erast Petrovich, and wondered what else he might say, but couldn’t think of anything and solemnly shook the consul by the hand. ‘And why is my return a sign of d-destiny?’

‘Why, because I’m resigning! I’ve already written my letter. My child can’t be born illegitimate. I’m getting married. But I won’t go back to Russia. People would look askance at a Japanese woman there. Better let them look askance at me instead. I’ll register as a Japanese subject and take my wife’s family name. I can’t have my child called “Dirty Man”. A letter of resignation is all very fine of course, but there was no one for me to hand the job over to. You disappeared, Shirota resigned. I was prepared for a lengthy wait. But here you are! What a happy day! You’re alive, so now I have someone I can pass things on to.’

Happiness is hard of hearing, and it never even occurred to Vsevolod Vitalievich that his final phrase might sound rather insulting to his assistant, but, in any case, Fandorin did not take offence – unhappiness is not distinguished by keenness of hearing either.

‘I remember. Epicurus!’ the vice-consul exclaimed, pulling down a book with gilt on the edges of its pages. ‘Yes! There it is!’

‘What is?’ asked the future father.

But the titular counsellor only muttered: ‘Later, later, no time just now,’ and blundered towards the door.

He never reached the agreed meeting place. On Yatobasi Bridge, beyond which the Bluff proper began, the tricyclist was hailed by a young Japanese man dressed in European style.

Politely raising his straw hat, he said:

‘Mr Fandorin, would you care to take some tea?’ And he pointed to a sign: ‘English and Japanese Tea Parlour’.

Drinking tea had not entered into Erast Petrovich’s plans, but being addressed by name like this produced the right impression on the vice-consul.

After surveying the young Japanese youth’s short but well-proportioned figure and taking especial note of his calm, exceptionally serious gaze – of a kind not very commonly found among young people – Fandorin asked:

‘Are you Dan? The medical student?’

‘At your service.’

The ‘tea parlour’ proved to be one of the hybrid establishments that were quite common in Yokohama: tables and chairs in one section, straw mats and pillows in the other.

At this early hour the English half was almost empty; there was no one but a pastor with his wife and five daughters taking tea with milk at one of the tables.

The titular counsellor’s guide led him farther on, slid open a paper partition, and Erast Petrovich saw that there were even fewer customers in the Japanese half – only one, in fact: a lean little old man in a faded kimono.

‘Why here? Why not on the hill?’ Erast Petrovich asked as he sat down. ‘The Black Jackets are up there, are they?’

The jonin’s eyes rested inquisitively on the titular counsellor’s stony face.

‘Yes. How did you know?’

‘Not having received a report, the Don realised that his second brigade had also been destroyed. He is expecting vengeance, he has prepared for a siege. And Shirota told him about the hill that has a c-clear view of the whole house. But why don’t you tell me how you guessed that I would ride into the Bluff from this side?’

‘I didn’t. Your servant is waiting on the road that leads from the racecourse. He would have brought you here too.’

‘So there’s no way to g-get into the house.’

‘I sat in a tree for a long time, looking through a gaijin spyglass. It is very bad. Tsurumaki does not come outside. There are sentries right along the fence. Vengeance will have to be postponed. Possibly for a week, or months, or even years. Never mind, vengeance is a dish that will not go stale.’ Tamba lit his little pipe slowly and deliberately. ‘I shall tell you how my great-grandfather, Tamba the Eighth, took his revenge on someone who did him wrong. A certain client, a powerful daimyo, decided not to pay for work that had been carried out and killed the shinobi who came to him to collect the money. It was a great deal of money, and the daimyo was greedy. He decided never to leave the confines of his castle again – indeed he never left his own chambers, nor did he allow anyone else into them. Then Tamba the Eighth ordered his son, a boy of nine, to get a job in the kitchen of the castle. The boy was diligent and he was gradually promoted. First he swept the yard, then the back rooms. Then he became the servants’ scullion. Then an apprentice to the prince’s chef. He spent a long time learning how to grate paste from a shark’s bladder – that requires especial skill. Finally, by the time he was nineteen, he had attained such a degree of perfection that he was allowed to prepare a difficult meal for the prince. That was the last day of the daimyo’s life. Retribution had taken ten years.’

Fandorin listened to this colourful story and thought: Live ten years with cramped lungs? No thank you.

But to be honest, another thought also occurred to him: What if vengeance doesn’t help?

This question went unanswered. Erast Petrovich asked a different one out loud.

‘Did you see Shirota in your spyglass?’

‘Yes, many times. Both outside and in a window of the house.’

‘And a white woman? Tall, with yellow hair woven into a long plait?’

‘There are no women in the house. There are only men.’ The jonin was looking at Fandorin with ever greater interest.

‘Just as I thought. In planning the defence, Shirota sent his fiancйe to some s-safe place…’ Erast Petrovich said with a nod of satisfaction. ‘We don’t have to wait for ten years. And a shark’s bladder will not be required either.’

‘And what will we require?’ Tamba asked in a very, very quiet voice, as if afraid of frightening away the prey.

His nephew leaned forward eagerly, with his eyes fixed on the gaijin. But Fandorin turned away and looked out at the street through the open window. His attention seemed to have been caught by a blue box hanging on a pillar. There were two crossed post horns on it.

His answer consisted of only two words:

‘A postman.’

Uncle and nephew exchanged glances.

‘A man who delivers letters?’ the jonin asked, to make quite certain.

‘Yes, a man who d-delivers letters.’

Letter-bag brimful

Of love and joy and sorrow -

Here comes a postman

THE REAL AKUNIN

The municipal express post, one of the greatest conveniences produced by the nineteenth century, had made its appearance in the Settlement only recently, and therefore the local inhabitants had recourse to its services more frequently than genuine necessity required. The postmen delivered not only official letters addressed, say, from a trading firm on Main Street to the customs office on the Bund, but also invitations to five o’clock tea, advertisement leaflets, intimate missives and even notes from a wife to a husband, informing him that it was time to go to lunch.

After Fandorin dropped the envelope with the five-cent ‘lightning’ stamp on it into the slit above the crossed post horns, less than half an hour went by before a fine young fellow in a dandified blue uniform rode up on a pony, checked the contents of the box and went clopping off over the cobblestones up the slope – to deliver the correspondence to the addressee at Number 130, the Bluff.

‘What is in the envelope?’ Tamba asked for the fourth time.

The first three attempts had produced no response. Fandorin’s feverish agitation as he addressed the envelope had given way to apathy. The gaijin didn’t hear any questions that he was asked – he sat there, gazing blankly at the street, every now and then beginning to gulp in air through his mouth and rub his chest, as if his waistcoat was too tight for him.

But old Tamba was patient. He waited and waited – and then asked again. And then again.

Eventually he got an answer.

‘Eh?’ Erast Petrovich asked with a start. ‘In the envelope? A poem. The moment Shirota reads it, he’ll lose control and come running. And he’ll pass along this street, over the b-bridge. Alone.’

Tamba didn’t understand about the poem, but he didn’t ask any questions – it wasn’t important.

‘Alone? Very good. We’ll grab him, it won’t be hard.’

He leaned across to Dan and started speaking rapidly in Japanese. The nephew kept nodding and repeating:

‘Hai, hai, hai…’

‘There’s no need to grab him,’ said Fandorin, interrupting their planning. ‘It will be enough if you simply bring him here. Can you do that?’

Shirota appeared very soon – Tamba had barely finished his preparations.

There was the sound of rapid hoof beats and a horseman in a panama hat and a light, sandy-coloured suit came riding round the bend. The former secretary was unrecognisable, so elegant, indeed dashing, did he look. He had the black brush of a moustache sprouting under his flattish nose, and instead of the little steel-rimmed spectacles, his face was adorned with a brand new gold pince-nez.

The native gentleman’s flushed features and the furious gait of his mount suggested that Shirota was in a terrible hurry, but he was obliged to pull back on the reins just before the bridge, when a hunchbacked beggar in a dusty kimono threw himself across the horseman’s path.

He grabbed hold of the bridle and started begging in a repulsive, plaintively false descant whine.

Restraining his overheated horse, Shirota abused the mendicant furiously and jerked on the reins, but the tramp had clutched them in a grip of iron.

Erast Petrovich observed this little incident from the window of the tea parlour, trying to stay in the shadow. Two or three passers-by, attracted for a brief moment by the shouting, had already turned away from such an uninteresting scene and gone about their business.

For half a minute the horseman tried in vain to free himself. Then, at last, he realised there was a quicker way. Muttering curses, he rummaged in his pocket, fished out a coin and tossed it to the old man.

And it worked – the beggar immediately let go of the reins. In a sudden impulse of gratitude, he seized his benefactor’s hand and pressed his lips against it (he must have seen gaijins doing that somewhere). Then he jumped back, gave a low bow and scurried away.

Amazingly enough, though, Shirota seemed to have forgotten that he was in a hurry; he shook his head, then rubbed his temple, as if he were trying to remember something. Then suddenly he swayed drunkenly and slumped sideways.

He would quite certainly have fallen, and probably bruised himself cruelly on the cobblestones, if a young native man of a most respectable appearance had not been walking by. The youth managed to catch the fainting horseman in his arms and the proprietor of the tea parlour came running out to help, together with the pastor, who had abandoned his numerous family.

‘Drunk?’ shouted the proprietor.

‘Dead?’ shouted the pastor.

The young man felt Shirota’s pulse and said:

‘Fainted. I’m a doctor… That is, I soon will be a doctor.’ He turned to the proprietor. ‘If you would allow us to carry this man into your establishment, I could help him.’

The three of them lugged the insensible body into the tea parlour and, since there was nowhere to put the sick man down in the English half, they carried him through into the Japanese half with its tatami – to the very spot where Erast Petrovich was finishing his tea.

It took a few minutes to get rid of the proprietor, and especially the pastor, who was very keen to comfort the martyr in his final minutes. The medical student explained that it was an ordinary fainting fit, there was no danger and the patient merely needed to lie down for a little while.

Soon Tamba came back. It was impossible to recognise this respectable-looking, clean old man as the repulsive beggar from the bridge. The jonin waited for the outsiders to go, then he leaned over Shirota, squeezed his temples with his fingers and sat down to one side.

The renegade came round immediately.

He batted his eyelids, studying the ceiling quizzically. He raised his head – and met the titular counsellor’s cold, blue-eyed gaze. He jerked upright and noticed the two Japanese near by. He barely glanced at young Dan, but stared at the quiet little old man as if he had never seen a more terrifying sight.

Shirota turned terribly pale and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead.

‘Is that Tamba?’ he asked Fandorin. ‘Yes, I recognised him from the description… This is what I was afraid of! That they had kidnapped Sophie. How can you, a civilised man, be in league with those ghouls?’

But when he glanced once again at his former colleague’s stony face, his features drooped and he murmured:

‘Yes, yes, of course… You had no choice… I understand. But I know you are a noble man. You will not allow the shinobi to do her any harm! Erast Petrovich, Mr Fandorin, you also love, you will understand me!’

‘No, I will not,’ the vice-consul replied indifferently. ‘The woman I loved is dead. Thanks to your efforts. Tamba said that you drew up the plan of the operation. Well then, the Don is fortunate in his choice of d-deputy.’

Shirota looked at Erast Petrovich in terror, frightened less by the meaning of the words than the lifeless tone in which they were spoken.

He whispered fervently:

‘I… I’ll do whatever they want, only let her go! She doesn’t know anything, she doesn’t understand anything about my business. She must not be held as a hostage! She is an angel!’

‘It never even entered my head to t-take Sophia Diogenovna hostage,’ Fandorin replied in the same dull, strangled voice. ‘What scurrilous nonsense you talk.’

‘That’s not true! I have received a note from her. This is Sophie’s hand!’ Shirota extracted the small sheet of pink paper from the torn envelope and read out: ‘“My poor heart can bear this no more. Oh come quickly to help me now! And if you do not come, you know I shall lose my life for you”. Tamba guessed where I had hidden Sophie and kidnapped her!’

The fiancй of the ‘captain’s daughter’ was a pitiful sight: lips trembling, pince-nez dangling on its lace, fingers intertwined imploringly.

But Erast Petrovich was not moved by this selfless love. The vice-consul rubbed his chest (those cursed lungs!) and simply said:

‘It’s not a note. It’s a poem.’

‘A poem?’ Shirota exclaimed in amazement. ‘Oh, come now! I know what Russian poems are like. There’s no rhyme here: “more” and “know” is not a rhyme. You can have no rhymes in blank verse, but that has rhythm. For instance, Pushkin: “I visited once more that corner of the earth where I spent two forgotten years in exile”. But this has no rhythm.’

‘But even so, it is a poem.’

‘Ah, perhaps it is a poem in prose,’ Shirota exclaimed with a flash of insight. ‘Like Turgenev! “I fancied then that I was somewhere in the Russian backwoods, in a simple village house”.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Erast Petrovich, who did not wish to argue. ‘But in any case, Sophia Diogenovna is not in any danger, I have n-no idea where you have hidden her.’

‘So you… You simply wanted to lure me out!’ Shirota flushed bright red. ‘Well then, you have succeeded. But I won’t tell you anything! Not even if your shinobi torture me.’ At those words he turned pale again. ‘I’d rather bite my tongue off.’

Erast Petrovich winced slightly.

‘No one is intending to torture you. You will get up in a moment and leave. I have met you here to ask you one single question. And you do not even have to answer it.’

Totally confused now, Shirota muttered:

‘You will let me go? Even if I don’t answer?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t somehow… Oh, very well, very well, ask.’

Looking him in the eye, Fandorin said slowly:

‘I remember you used to call me a friend. And you said that you were in my debt for ever. Then you betrayed me, although I trusted you. Tell me, sincere man and admirer of Pushkin, does serving the Fatherland really justify absolutely any kind of villainy?’

Shirota frowned tensely, expecting a continuation. But none came.

‘That’s all. The question has been asked. You can choose not to answer it. And g-goodbye.’

The admirer of Pushkin turned red again. Seeing Fandorin getting up, he exclaimed:

‘Wait, Erast Petrovich!’

‘Let’s go,’ said Fandorin, beckoning wearily to Tamba and his nephew.

‘I did not betray you!’ Shirota said hastily. ‘I set the Don a condition – that you must remain alive.’

‘After which his men attempted to kill me several times… The woman who was dearer to me than anything else in the world was killed. Killed because of you. Goodbye, sincere man.’

‘Where are you going?’ Shirota shouted after him.

‘To your patron. I have a score to settle with him.’

‘But he will kill you!’

‘How so?’ asked the titular counsellor, turning round. ‘He promised you to let me live, did he not?’

Shirota dashed up to him and grabbed hold of his shoulder.

‘Erast Petrovich, what am I to do? If I help you, I shall betray my Fatherland! If I help my Fatherland I shall destroy you, and then I am a low scoundrel, and the only thing left for me to do will be kill to myself!’ His eyes blazed with fire. ‘Yes, yes, that is a solution. If Don Tsurumaki kills you, I shall kill myself!’

A faint semblance of feeling stirred in Fandorin’s frozen soul – it was spite. Fanning this feeble spark in the hope that it would grow into a salutary flame, the titular counsellor hissed:

‘Why, at the slightest little moral difficulty, do you Japanese immediately do away with yourselves? As if that will turn a villainous deed into a noble act! It won’t! And the good of the Fatherland has nothing to do with it! I wish no harm to your precious Fatherland, I wish harm to the akunin by the name of Don Tsurumaki! Are you eternally in his debt too?’

‘No, but I believe this man is capable of leading Japan on to the path of progress and civilisation. I help him because I am a patriot!’

‘What would you do with the man who killed Sophia Diogenovna? Ah, now see how your eyes blaze! Help me take revenge for my love and then serve your Fatherland, who’s stopping you? Get yourselves a constitution, build up the army and the navy, put the foreign powers in their place. Are p-progress and civilisation impossible without the bandit Tsurumaki? Then they’re not worth a bent kopeck. And another thing. You say you are a patriot. But how can a man really be a patriot if he knows that he is a scoundrel?’

‘I need to think,’ Shirota whispered. He hung his head and made for the door.

Dan waited for him to leave the room and then started after him without a sound, but Tamba stopped his nephew.

‘What a pity that I don’t know Russian,’ said the jonin. ‘I don’t know what you said to him, but I have never seen the zone of self-satisfaction below the left cheekbone change its form and colour so irrevocably in five minutes.’

‘Don’t be too quick to celebrate,’ said Erast Petrovich, anguished to feel that the flame of wrath had not taken hold – the little spark had shrivelled away to nothing, and once again it was difficult to breathe. ‘He has to think.’

‘Shirota has already decided everything, he simply hasn’t realised it yet. Now it will all be very simple.’

Naturally, the master of ninso was not mistaken.

Indeed, the operation looked so simple that Tamba wanted to take only Dan with him, but Erast Petrovich insisted on taking part. He knew he would be a burden to the Stealthy Ones, but he was afraid that if he did not exterminate Tsurumaki with his own hands, the tight ring constricting his chest would never open again.

In a secluded spot on the high seashore, they changed into black and covered their faces with masks.

‘A genuine shinobi,’ said Tamba, shaking his head as he examined the titular counsellor. ‘Only very lanky…’

Masa was ordered to stay and guard the clothes, and when Fandorin’s servant tried to rebel, Tamba took him gently by the neck and pressed – and the rebel closed his eyes, lay down on the ground and started snuffling sweetly.

They didn’t head straight for the gates – there were always sentries on duty there. They went through the garden of the Right Honourable Algernon Bullcox. The ferocious mastiffs were pacified by Dan; he blew into a little pipe three times, and the terrifying monsters sank into a peaceful sleep, just like Masa.

As they walked past the familiar house with the dark windows, Erast Petrovich kept looking up at the first floor and waiting for something to stir in his soul. Nothing stirred.

They stopped at the small gate that led out of the garden into the neighbouring estate. Dan took out some kind of slide-whistle and trilled like a cicada.

The gate swung open without a sound, not even the spring jangled – Shirota had taken care of that by lubricating the gate earlier.

‘That way,’ said Fandorin, pointing towards the pond and the dark silhouette of the pavilion.

Everything was set to end where it had begun. In a detailed note, Shirota had informed them that Tsurumaki did not spend the night in the house. One of his men went to bed in his room and the master of the house went off to sleep in the pavilion. No one else in the house knew about this, apart from Shirota and two bodyguards.

That was why Tamba regarded the operation as not very complicated.

As they approached the pavilion where he had spent so many happy hours, Erast listened to his heart again – would it start pounding or not? No, it didn’t.

The jonin put his hand on Fandorin’s shoulder and gestured for him to lie down on the ground. Only the shinobi went on from there. They didn’t crawl, they didn’t freeze on the spot – they simply walked, but in such an amazing way that Fandorin could hardly see them.

The shadows of the night clouds slid across the grass and the paths, and Tamba and his nephew managed to stay in the dark patches all the time, not getting caught even once in a brightly lit patch.

When the sentry on duty between them and the pool suddenly turned his head and listened, they both froze absolutely still. It seemed to Erast Petrovich that the bodyguard was looking straight at the Stealthy Ones, who were separated from him by a distance of no more than ten paces. But the sentry yawned and started gazing at the glimmering surface of the water again.

There was a very faint sound, like a light exhalation. The sentry tumbled over gently on to his side, dropping his carbine. Dan had fired a dart from his blowpipe. The sleeping drug took effect instantly. The man would wake up in fifteen minutes’ time, and think he had just dozed off a second ago. The young ninja ran straight over to the wall and round the corner. A few moments later he peeped back round and gave a signal: the second bodyguard had also been put to sleep.

Fandorin could get up now.

Tamba was waiting for the titular counsellor by the door. He didn’t let Fandorin go ahead, though, but ducked in first himself.

He leaned down over the sleeping man for no more than an instant and then said in a voice that was low, but not a whisper:

‘Come in, he’s yours.’

The night lamp came on with a flash – the same one that Erast Petrovich had used so many times. Don Tsurumaki was lying on the futon with his eyes closed.

Even the bed was the same one…

Tamba shook his head as he looked at the sleeping man.

‘I pressed his sleep point, he won’t wake up. A good death, with no fear or pain. An akunin like this deserves worse.’ He held out a little stick with a pointed end. ‘Prick him on the chest or the neck. Lightly, so that only one drop of blood seeps out. That will be enough – no one will guess that the Don was killed. The bodyguards will swear that they never closed their eyes. A natural death. His heart stopped in his sleep. It happens with excessively full-blooded individuals.’

Erast Petrovich looked at the ruddy features of his sworn enemy in the grip of a magical stupor. This is no chimerical dйjб vu, he told himself. This really has happened once before. I stood over the sleeping Don and listened to his regular breathing. But everything was different then. He wasn’t asleep, he was pretending. That is one. I was the prey and not the hunter. That is two. And on that occasion my heart was pounding, but now it is calm.

‘I cannot kill a sleeping man,’ said Fandorin. ‘Wake him.’

Tamba muttered something under his breath – invective, no doubt. But he didn’t argue.

‘All right. Only be careful. He is cunning and brave.’

The jonin touched the fat man’s neck and skipped back into the shadow.

Tsurumaki started and opened his eyes, which opened wider at the sight of the black figure with one hand raised.

Erast Petrovich pulled the mask off his face, and the Don’s eyes opened wider still.

The most stupid thing that Erast Petrovich could do in this situation was enter into conversation with the condemned man, but how could he strike a man who was unarmed, and without saying anything, like an executioner?

‘It’s not a dream,’ said Fandorin. ‘Farewell, akunin, and may you be cursed.’

Well, he had said his farewell, but he still hadn’t struck the blow.

Who could tell how all this would have ended – but the titular counsellor was lucky. Don Tsurumaki, a man with strong nerves, snatched a revolver out from under his pillow, and then, with a feeling of relief, Erast Petrovich prodded the villain on the collarbone.

The Don made a strange, snoring sound, dropped the gun, twitched several times and lay still. The whites of his upturned eyes glinted between the half-closed eyelids.

Fandorin tried to breathe with his full chest, but he couldn’t!

What was this? The death of his enemy had not brought him relief? Perhaps because it had happened too quickly and simply?

He swung his hand back to strike another blow, but Tamba interfered and grabbed his wrist.

‘Enough! It will leave marks.’

‘I still can’t get my breath.’

‘That’s all right, it will pass off now,’ said the jonin, slapping the vice-consul on the back. ‘The death of an enemy is the very best medicine.’

Incredibly enough, at those words Fandorin suddenly felt better. It was as if some kind of spring unwound inside him. He breathed in cautiously – and the air flowed easily into his chest, filling it right up. The sensation was so delightful that it set Erast Petrovich’s head spinning.

So it hadn’t all been in vain!

While the titular counsellor was relishing his new-found freedom of breath, Tamba hid the revolver under the pillow again, laid the dead man out more naturally, opened his mouth slightly, sprayed something into it, and bubbles of foam sprang out on to the lips. Then he lowered the collar of the nightshirt and wiped away the solitary drop of blood.

‘That’s it, let us go! Let us not cause trouble for our friend Shirota. Well, what’s wrong with you?’

Fandorin’s clarity of thought had returned to him together with his breathing. He looked at Tamba, and seemed to see him properly for the first time – see all of him, just as he was, right through.

‘Our friend?’ Erast Petrovich repeated slowly. ‘Why, of course, this whole business is about Shirota. That’s what you needed me for. You could have avenged yourself on the Don without me. But that’s not enough for you, you want to restore your alliance with the powerful organisation that Tsurumaki created. You calculated that once the Don was gone, Shirota, his right-hand man, would take over the organisation. Especially if you helped him to do it. But you didn’t know how to approach Shirota. And then you decided to use me. Right?’

The jonin didn’t answer. The eyes in the slit of his mask blazed with a furious fire. But, swept on by the irrepressible flood of liberated mental energy, Fandorin continued:

‘I couldn’t breathe! Now I remember how it began. Beside the funeral pyre, when you pretended to restrain me, you squeezed my chest very hard! I thought I couldn’t breathe because of the shock, but it was all your tricks. With my lungs half paralysed, my soul frozen and my rational mind numbed, I was like wax in your hands. And the reason why it has passed off just now is nothing to do with the death of my enemy – it’s because you slapped me on the back! But now I’ve played my part, and my usefulness is exhausted. You’re going to kill me. The Don was a villain, but the blood in all his veins was alive and hot. He wasn’t the real akunin, you are – with your cold heart, devoid of all love and nobility. You didn’t even love your daughter at all. Poor Midori! At her funeral all you were thinking about was how to make the most advantageous use of her death!’

Evidently Erast Petrovich’s mental clarity had not returned to him in full. Otherwise he would not have shouted his accusations out loud, he would not have shown that he had seen through the old shinobi’s game.

There was only one way to correct this fatal error. The titular counsellor lunged, aiming the poisoned stick at the schemer’s chest. But Tamba was prepared for an attack. He dodged and struck Fandorin gently on the wrist, leaving the hand dangling limply. The joninimmediately took the wooden weapon.

Erast Petrovich was not in the right state of mind to clutch at life. Holding his numbed hand, he turned his chest towards Tamba and waited for the blow.

‘Your conclusions are only half right,’ said the jonin, putting the small stick away. ‘Yes, I am a real akunin. But I won’t kill you. Let us get out of here. The guards will wake up any minute now. This is not the time or the place for explanations. Especially since they will be long. Let us go. And I’ll tell you about the Diamond Chariot and a real akunin.’

A real

akunin

–

Husky laugh, knife in his teeth

And wild, crazy eyes

THUS SPAKE TAMBA

Tamba said:

‘The sun will rise soon. Let’s go up on to the cliff, watch the dawn and talk.’

They went back to the spot where Masa was waiting, surly and offended. They changed their clothes.

Erast Petrovich had already realised why the old ninja didn’t kill him in the pavilion. It would have contradicted the story of the Don’s supposed natural death and cause problems for Shirota in taking the dead man’s place.

There was only one thing he could do now: try to save Masa.

Calling his servant off to one side, the titular counsellor handed him a note and told him to run to Doronin at the consulate as fast as his legs would carry him.

Tamba observed this scene impassively – he was obviously certain that Masa would not escape from him anyway.

Probably that was it. But the note said: ‘Send my servant to the embassy immediately, his life is in danger’. Doronin was an intelligent and reliable man – he would do it. Tamba probably wouldn’t bother to break into a foreign embassy in order to kill a witness who was not really all that much of a threat. And in the final analysis, the jonin had only one assistant now.

So that Masa would not suspect anything was amiss, Erast Petrovich smiled at him cheerily.

His servant stopped sulking straight away, replied with a beaming smile of his own and exclaimed something in a joyful voice.

‘He is happy that his master is smiling,’ Dan translated. ‘He says that vengeance has done his master good. He is very sorry for Midori-san, of course, but there will be other women.’

Then Masa ran off to carry out his errand, and they let Dan go too.

The two of them were left alone.

‘There is a good view from over there,’ said the jonin, pointing to a high cliff with white breakers foaming at its foot.

They started walking up a narrow path: the shinobi in front, the titular counsellor behind.

Erast Petrovich was almost half as tall again as him, he had his trusty Herstal lying in its holster and his adversary was even standing with his back to him, but Fandorin knew that against this lean little old man he was as helpless as a baby. The jonin could kill him at any moment.

Well, let him, thought Erast Petrovich. Death didn’t frighten him. Or even interest him very much.

They sat side by side on the edge of the cliff, with their legs dangling.

‘Of course, watching the dawn on the edge of the precipice was much better.’ Tamba sighed, no doubt remembering his ruined house. ‘But here there is the sea.’

Just then the sun peeped over the edge of the world, transforming the watery plain into a steppe blazing with wildfire.

Despite himself, the titular counsellor felt something like gratitude – he was going to be killed beautifully. No doubt about it, the Japanese were connoisseurs when it came to death.

‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ he said, without looking at his companion. ‘Why am I still alive?’

Tamba said:

‘She had two requests. The first was for me not to kill you.’

‘And the second?’

‘To teach you the Way. If you wanted me to. I have kept my first promise, and I will keep the second. Even though I know that our Way is not for you.’

‘I don’t want your Way, thank you very much,’ Fandorin said with a sideways glance at the jonin, not sure whether he could trust him. What if this was just another Jesuitical trick? A simple movement of his elbow, and the vice-consul would go flying down on to the sharp rocks below. ‘A fine Way it is, built on villainy and deception.’

Tamba said:

‘I brought you here so that you could see the departure of darkness and the arrival of light. But I should have brought you at sunset, when the opposite happens. Tell me, which is better, sunrise or sunset?’

‘A strange question,’ Fandorin said with a shrug. ‘They are both natural events, essential phenomena of nature.’

‘Precisely. The world consists of Light and Darkness. Of Good and Evil. The man who adheres to Good alone is unfree, he is restricted, like a traveller who only dares to travel by the bright light of day, or a ship that can only sail with a fair wind. The man who is truly strong and free is the one who is not afraid to wander through a dark thicket at night. That dark thicket is the world in all its completeness, it is the human soul with all its contradictions. Do you know about Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism?’

‘Yes, I have heard about that. The Hinayana, or Lesser Vehicle, is when a man seeks to save himself through self-improvement. The Mahayana, or Greater Vehicle, is when you seek to save the whole of m-mankind, or something of the sort.’

Tamba said:

‘In reality these two vehicles are the same. They both call on men to live only by the laws of Good. They are intended for ordinary, weak people – in other words they are one-sided, incomplete. A strong man has no need to restrict himself to the Good, he does not need to squeeze one eye tight shut to avoid accidentally seeing something terrible.’

Tamba said:

‘There is a third vehicle, and the privilege of mounting it is granted only to a small number of the elect. It is called Kongojyo, the Diamond Chariot, because it is as strong as diamond. We Stealthy Ones are riders in the Diamond Chariot. To ride in it means to live by the rules of the entire creation, including Evil. And that is the same as living without rules and contrary to the rules: the Way of the Diamond Chariot is the Way to truth through comprehension of the laws of Evil. It is a secret teaching for the initiated, who are willing to make any sacrifices in order to discover themselves.’

Tamba said:

‘The Way of the Diamond Chariot teaches that the Greater World, which is the world of a man’s soul, is incomparably more important than the Lesser World, which is the world of human relations. In actual fact, sacrificing yourself for the sake of others is the worst possible crime in the eyes of the Buddha. A man is born, lives and dies face to face with God alone. Everything else is merely visions created by a Higher Power in order to subject a man to tests. The great religious teacher Shinran stated: “Reflecting profoundly on the will of the Buddha Amida, I shall find that the whole of creation was conceived for me alone”.’

Tamba said:

‘Ordinary people are torn between the illusory world of human relations and the real world of the free soul, and constantly betray the latter in the name of the former. We Stealthy Ones are able to distinguish diamond from coal. All things exalted by ordinary morality are mere empty words to us. Killing is not a sin, deception is not a sin, cruelty is not a sin, if they are necessary in order to race on along the appointed Way in the Diamond Chariot. To riders in the Diamond Chariot, the crimes for which riders in the Greater and Lesser Chariots are cast down into hell are merely the means to attaining Buddha nature.’

The titular counsellor had to protest at that:

‘If human relations are nothing for you diamond riders and deception is no sin, why keep your word to someone who is no longer among the living? What does it matter if you did promise your daughter? Treachery is a virtue for you, is it not? Kill me, and it’s all over and done with. Why waste time on me, reading me sermons?’

Tamba said:

‘You are right and wrong at the same time. Right, because to break the promise given to my dead daughter would be to act correctly, it would raise me to a higher level of freedom. And wrong because Midori was more than a daughter to me. She was an Initiate, my companion in the Diamond Chariot. This chariot is cramped, those who ride in it must follow certain rules – but only in relation to each other. Otherwise we will start jostling each other with our elbows, and the Chariot will overturn. That is the only law by which we abide. It is much stricter than the ten commandments that the Buddha proclaimed for ordinary weak people. Our rules say: If a companion in the Chariot has asked you to die, then do it; even if he has asked you to jump out of the Chariot, do it – otherwise you will not reach the Destination to which you aspire. What is Midori’s little whim in comparison with this?’

‘I am a little whim,’ Erast Petrovich muttered.

Tamba said:

‘It is not important what you believe in and what you dedicate your life to. That does not matter to the Buddha. What is important is to be faithful to your calling – that is the essential thing, because then you are faithful to yourself, which means you are also faithful to the Buddha. We shinobi serve a client for money and, if necessary, we willingly give our lives – but not for the sake of money, and even less for the sake of the client, whom we often despise. We are faithful to Fidelity and we serve Service. Everyone around us is warm or hot, we alone are always cold, but our icy chill scorches more powerfully than fire.’

Tamba said:

‘I will tell you a true legend about something said by Buddha, one which is known only to a few initiates. The Supreme One once appeared to the bodhisattvas and told them: “If you kill living things, excel in falsehood, consume excrement and wash it down with urine – only then will you become Buddha. If you fornicate with your mother, sister and daughter and commit a thousand other atrocities, there is an exalted place in store for you in the kingdom of the Buddha”. The virtuous bodhisattvas were horrified by these words, they trembled and fell to the ground.’

‘And they did right!’ Fandorin observed.

‘No. They did not understand what the Supreme One was talking about.’

‘Well, what was he talking about?’

‘About the fact that Good and Evil do not really exist. The first commandment in both your religion and ours is: Do not kill. Tell me, is it good or bad to kill?’

‘Bad.’

‘And to kill a tigress that has attacked a child, is that good or bad?’

‘Good.’

‘Good for whom? For the child, or for the tigress and her cubs? This is what the Buddha was expounding to the holy beings. Surely, under a certain set of circumstances, the actions that He listed, which seemed so vile to the bodhisattvas, can be an expression of supreme nobility or self-sacrifice? Think before you answer.’

The titular counsellor thought.

‘Probably they can…’

Tamba said:

‘And if this is so, of what great value is a commandment that restrains Evil? There must be someone to possess complete mastery of the art of Evil, so that it will be transformed from a fearsome enemy into an obedient slave.’

Tamba said:

‘The Diamond Chariot is the Way for those who live by murder, theft and all the other mortal sins, but still do not lose hope of attaining Nirvana. There cannot be many of us, but we must exist and we always do. The world needs us, and the Buddha does not forget us. We are as much His servants as all the others. We are the knife with which He cuts the umbilical cord, and the nail with which He tears the scab off the body.’

‘No!’ Erast Petrovich exclaimed. ‘I don’t agree with you! You have chosen the way of Evil, because that is what you wanted for yourself. It is not what God wants!’

Tamba said:

‘I did not promise to persuade you, I promised to explain. I told my daughter: He is not one of the chosen. You will not attain the Greater knowledge, you will be confined to the Lesser. I shall do what I promised Midori. You will come to me and I shall teach you, little by little, all that you are capable of mastering. That will be enough for you to pass for a strong man in the world of people of the West. Are you willing to learn?’

‘The Lesser Knowledge, yes. But I do not want your Greater Knowledge.’

‘Well then, so be it… To begin with, forget everything you have ever learned. Including what I have taught you before. We are only starting our real studies now. Let us start with the great art of kiai: how to focus and direct the spiritual energy of ki while maintaining the quiescence of the shin, which Western people call the soul. Look into my eyes and listen.’

Forget your reading.

Learn to read all things anew.

Thus spake the sensei

PS. THE LETTER WRITTEN AND BURNED BY THE PRISONER KNOWN AS THE ACROBAT 27 MAY 1905

Father,

It feels strange to call you that, for since I was a boy I have been used to addressing someone else, the man in whose house I grew up, as ‘father’.

Today I looked at you and recalled what I had been told about you by my grandfather, my mother and my adopted relatives.

My journey has reached its end. I have been faithful to my Way and walked it as I was taught, trying not to succumb to doubts. It is all the same to me how this war ends. I have not fought against your country. I have fought to overcome the obstacles which malicious Fate has raised up on the Path of my Chariot in order to test me. The most difficult test of all was the one at which the heart softens, but I have overcome even that.

I am not writing this letter out of sentimentality, but to fulfil a request from my late mother.

She once said to me: ‘In the world of Buddha there are many wonders, and it may happen that someday you will meet your father. Tell him that I wished to part from him beautifully, but your grandfather was adamant; “If you wish your gaijin to live, then do my bidding. He must see you dead and mutilated. Only then will he do what I require”. I did as he ordered, and it has tormented me for the rest of my life’.

I know this story, I have heard it many times – how my mother sheltered from the blast in a secret hiding place, how my grandfather dragged her out from under the rubble, how she lay on the funeral pyre with black clay daubed over half her face.

The only thing I do not know is the meaning of the phrase that my mother asked me to relay to you if a miracle were to happen and we should meet.

That phrase is this: YOU CAN LOVE.

Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin was born in Tbilisi, in the Republic of Georgia, as Grigory Shalvovich Chkhartishvili. His father was Georgian and his mother was Jewish, since 1958 he has lived in Moscow. Influenced by Japanese Kabuki theatre, he joined the historical-philological branch of the Institute of the Countries of Asia and Africa of the Moscow State University as an expert on Japan.Before he embarked on a life of crime writing, Grigory Chkhartishvili worked as an assistant to the editor-in-chief of the magazine Foreign Literature, but left in October 2000 to pursue a career as a fiction writer.

***

[i]

‘That tickles!’ (Japanese).

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[ii]

‘Stop!’ (Japanese)

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[iii]

A measure of weight equal to 3.75 kilograms

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[iv]

In Japanese, ‘tanuki’ means badger

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[v]

‘Stop!’ (Japanese)

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[vi]

‘Welcome’ (Japanese)

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[vii]

Company commanders, company commanders, company commanders! (Japanese)

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[viii]

‘Speak! Who are you? Who sent you?’ (distorted Japanese)

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[ix]

‘See this?’ (Japanese)

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[x]

‘Masa, get Asagawa here, quickly!’ (distorted Japanese)

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[xi]

In the English style (French)

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[xii]

‘You’re not going. I’m going alone’ (distorted Japanese)

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[xiii]

‘To protect O-Yumi. Understand?’ (distorted Japanese)

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[xiv]

‘Bring him’ (Japanese)

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[xv]

‘In ten years, Tokyo is nothing. Real power is the provinces. Real power is Mr Tsurumaki. Japan is not Tokyo. Japan is the provinces’ (distorted English)

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[xvi]

‘Rope’ (Japanese)

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[xvii]

‘Let’s go!’ (Japanese)

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[xviii]

‘Again’ (Japanese)

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[xix]

‘Attack!’ (Japanese)

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[xx]

Hidden village (Japanese)

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[xxi]

In Japanese neko-chan means ‘little cat’

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[xxii]

Shinran (1173-1263), the founder of the Jodo sect of the school of the Way of the Pure Land

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[xxiii]

A unit of area (0.033 m3)

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[xxiv]

A unit of length (1.81m)