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.