The Diamond Chariot (91 page)

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 déjá 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
jonin
immediately 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: