The Death of Achilles

FOUR

Chasan and Achimas walked up the hill to Medvedev’s house in order to avoid alerting the sentries with the clattering of hooves. They left their horses in a copse at the bottom of the cliff. Down below in the valley, there were only scattered points of light — Semigorsk was already sleeping. Transparent clouds skidded across the greenish black sky, and the night constantly changed from bright to dark and back again.

The plan had been drawn up by Achimas. Evgenia would open the small garden gate at the special knock they had agreed on. They would creep through the garden into the yard, stun both sentries, and go down into the basement. Evgenia would open the armored door, because her husband had shown her how to do it, and he wrote down the number of the combination on a piece of paper that he hid behind the icon in the bedroom. He was afraid of forgetting the combination, which would mean that he would have to take up the stonework of the floor — there would be no other way of getting into the iron room. They would not take everything — only as much as they could carry away. Achimas would take Evgenia with him.

While they were making their arrangements, she had suddenly looked into his eyes and asked: “Lia, you won’t deceive me, will you?”

He didn’t know what to do with her. His uncle gave him no advice. “When the moment comes to decide, your heart will tell you what to do,” said Chasan. But they took only three horses. One for Chasan, one for Achimas, and one for the spoils. The nephew watched silently as his uncle led the chestnut, the black, and the bay out of the stable, but he said nothing.

As he walked along the white wall without making a sound, Achimas wondered what those words meant: “your heart will tell you.” As yet his heart was silent.

The garden gate opened immediately on oiled hinges that did not squeak. Evgenia was standing in the opening, wearing a tall fur hat and a felt cloak. She had prepared for a journey.

“Walk behind us, woman,” Chasan whispered, and she moved aside to let them through.

Medvedev had six retired soldiers. They stood guard in pairs, changing every four hours.

Achimas pressed himself up against an apple tree and watched what was happening in the yard. One sentry was sitting on a bollard beside the gates, dozing with his arms around his rifle. The other was striding at an even pace from the gates to the house and back: thirty steps to the house, thirty steps back.

Of course, the sentries would have to be killed — when Achimas had agreed in his conversation with Evgenia that he would only stun them and tie them up, he had known that the promise could not be kept.

Achimas waited until the wakeful sentry halted to light his pipe, then silently ran up behind him in his soft leather shoes and struck him just above the ear with his brass knuckles. Brass knuckles were a quite invaluable item when someone had to be killed very quickly. Better than a knife, because a knife had to be withdrawn from the wound, and that cost an extra second.

The soldier did not cry out, and Achimas caught the limp body in his arms, but the second sentry was sleeping lightly and he stirred and turned his head at the sound of crunching bone.

Achimas pushed the dead body away and in three massive bounds he was already at the gates. The soldier opened his dark mouth, but he had no time to cry out. The blow to his temple flung his head backward and it smashed against the oak boards with a dull thud.

Achimas dragged one dead man into the shadows and positioned the other one as he had been sitting before.

He waved his hand, and Chasan and Evgenia came out into the moonlit yard. The woman glanced at the seated corpse without speaking and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Her teeth were chattering rapidly. Now, by the light of the moon, Achimas could see that under her cloak she was wearing a Circassian coat with cartridge belts and she had a dagger at her waist.

“Go, woman, open the iron room,” Chasan prompted her.

They walked down the steps into the basement — Evgenia opened the door with a key. Down below, one wall of the square chamber was made of steel. Evgenia lit a lamp. She took hold of the wheel on the armored door and began turning it to the right and the left, glancing at a piece of paper. Chasan looked on curiously, shaking his head. Something clicked in the door and Evgenia tried to pull the massive slab outward, but the steel was too heavy for her.

Chasan moved the woman aside, grunted with effort, and the door began swinging out, reluctantly at first, but then more and more freely.

Achimas took the lamp and went inside. The room was smaller than he had imagined: about six paces wide and fifteen paces long. It contained trunks, bags, and files of papers.

Chasan opened one trunk and immediately slammed it shut again — it was full of silver ingots. You couldn’t take many of those; they were too heavy. But the bags were filled with jangling gold coins, and the uncle smacked his lips in approval. He began stuffing bags inside his coat and then heaping them up on his cloak.

Achimas was more interested in the files, which turned out to contain share certificates and bonds. He began selecting the ones that came from mass issues and had the highest face value. Shares in Rothschild, Krupp, and the Khludov factories were worth more than gold, but Chasan was a man of the old breed and he would never have believed that.

Grunting again, he loaded his heavy bundle onto his back and glanced around regretfully — there were still so many bags left — then sighed and started toward the door. Achimas had a thick wad of securities inside his coat. Evgenia had not taken anything.

When Chasan began climbing up the shallow steps to the yard, there was a sudden volley of shots. Chasan tumbled backward and slid down the steps headfirst. His face was the face of a man overtaken by sudden death. His cloak came untied and the gold scattered downward, glittering and jingling.

Achimas went down on all fours, scrambled up the steps, and peered out cautiously. He was holding a long-barrel American Colt revolver, loaded with six bullets.

The yard was empty. His enemies had taken up a position on the veranda of the house and could not be seen from below. But it was also unlikely that they could see Achimas, because the steps of the staircase were shrouded in intense darkness.

“One of you is dead!” Lazar Medvedev’s voice called out. “Who is it, Chasan or Achimas?”

Achimas took aim at the voice, but did not fire — he did not like to miss.

“Chasan, it was Chasan,” the baptized Jew shouted triumphantly. “Your figure, Mr. Welde, is slimmer. Come out, young man. You have nowhere to go. Do you know what electricity is? When the door of the repository opens, an alarm bell sounds in my bedroom. There are four of us here — me and three of my soldiers; I’ve sent the fourth one for the superintendent. Come out, let’s stop wasting time! The hour is getting late!”

They fired another volley — evidently trying to frighten him. The hail of bullets rattled against the stone walls.

Evgenia whispered from behind him: “I’ll go out. It’s dark, I’m wearing a cloak, they won’t understand. They’ll think it’s you. They’ll break cover and you can shoot them all.”

Achimas pondered her suggestion. He could take Evgenia with him, now that there was a free horse. It was just a pity that they would never reach the copse. “No,” he said, “they are too afraid of me, they will start shooting immediately.”

“They won’t,” Evgenia replied. “I’ll raise my hands high in the air.” She stepped lightly over Achimas’s recumbent form and walked out into the yard, her hands thrown out to the sides, as if she were afraid of losing her balance. When she had taken five steps a ragged volley of shots rang out.

Evgenia was thrown backward. Four shadows cautiously climbed down from the dark veranda and approached the motionless body. I was right, thought Achimas, they did fire. And he killed all four of them.

In the years that followed he rarely remembered Evgenia. Only if some chance occurrence happened to remind him of her. Or in his dreams.