‘How did you find them?’ the intendant asked after a thirty-second silence.
‘I won’t tell you that. Our agreement was only for the name. Let me out!’
Without looking, he grabbed the first file that came to hand, took out several sheets of paper and started tearing them, holding his hands up close to the opening.
‘All right! We have an agreement. Throw your weapon out here!’
Asagawa nodded and flattened himself against the wall -at the spot where the door would open.
Going up on tiptoe, Fandorin tossed his Herstal into the air vent.
The aperture went dark and the eye appeared again. It examined Fandorin carefully.
He stood there tensely, poised to spring into the blind zone if a gun barrel appeared instead of an eye.
‘Take your clothes off,’ Suga told him. ‘Everything. Completely naked.’
‘What for?’
‘I want to make sure you haven’t got another weapon hidden anywhere.’
Seeing Asagawa cautiously cocking the hammer of his revolver with two fingers, Fandorin replied hastily:
‘Only don’t even think of trying to shoot. I’ll jump out of the way before you’re even ready. And then that’s the end of the agreement.
‘On my word of honour,’ the intendant promised.
He was lying, of course, but Fandorin’s words had not been meant for him – they were for the inspector, who understood and gestured reassuringly: I won’t.
The titular counsellor got undressed slowly, holding up every item of his ensemble for the intendant to see and them dropping it to the floor. Eventually he was left standing there in his birthday suit.
‘Well built,’ Suga said approvingly. ‘Only your belly’s too hollow. A man’s hara should be more substantial than that. Now turn your back to me and raise your hands.’
‘So that you can shoot me in the back of my head? Oh, no.’
‘All right. Put your clothes under your arm. Take your shoes in the other hand. When I open the door, walk out slowly.
The cunning door sprang to one side, leaving the way out open.
‘We want him alive,’ Erast Petrovich mimed with his lips as he walked past Asagawa.
The office was illuminated by a bright light that flickered slightly. Suga was standing on the same chair that the vice-consul had set against the wall so recently. The intendant was holding a large, black revolver (it looked like a Swedish Hagström) and Fandorin’s Herstal was lying on the desk.
‘NAKED VICE-CONSUL SHOT IN POLICE CHIEF’S OFFICE’ – the headline flashed through the junior diplomat’s mind.
Nonsense, he won’t shoot. This isn’t an insulated space, with walls that muffle sound. The duty officers will hear and come running. Why would he want that? But, of course, he’s not going to let me out of here alive.
Without stopping, and giving the intendant only a fleeting glance, Fandorin headed straight for the exit.
‘Where are you going?’ Suga asked in amazement. ‘Are you going to walk through the department naked? Put your clothes on. And anyway, they won’t let you through. I’ll see you out.’
The police chief put his gun away and held up his empty hands: See, I keep my word.
The titular counsellor had never actually had any intention of strolling through the corridors in the altogether. The whole point of the manoeuvre was to distract the intendant’s attention from the secret repository and, above all, make him turn his back to it.
It worked!
Suga watched as the vice-consul donned his Mephistophelean outfit, and meanwhile Asagawa darted silently out of the door and trained his gun on the general.
How is this sly dog planning to kill me? Erast Petrovich wondered as he pulled on one of his gymnastic slippers. After all, he can’t leave any blood on the parquet.
‘You are an interesting man, Mr Fandorin,’ Suga rumbled good-naturedly, laughing into his curled moustache. ‘I actually like you. I think we have a lot in common. We both like to break the rules. Who knows, perhaps some day fate will throw us together again, and not necessarily as opponents. A period of cooling relations between Russian and Japan will probably set in now, but in about fifteen or twenty years, everything will change. We shall become a great power, your state will realise that we cannot be manipulated, we have to be treated as a friend. And then…’
He’s talking to distract me, Fandorin realised, seeing the intendant moving closer, almost as if by chance. With his arms casually bent at the elbows and his hands held forward, as if he were gesticulating.
So that was it. He was going to kill without any blood. Using jujitsu, or some other kind of jitsu.
Gazing calmly into his adversary’s face, the titular counsellor assumed the defensive posture he had been taught by Masa, advancing one half-bent knee and raising his hand in front of himself. Suga’s eyes glinted merrily.
‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you,’ he said, chuckling, no longer concealing his preparations for a fight.
Left hand turned palm upward, right arm bent at the elbow, with the hand held behind the back, one foot raised off the floor – a real dancing Shiva. What sort of jitsu have I run up against this time? the vice-consul thought with a sigh.
‘Now, let’s see what you’re like in unarmed combat,’ the police general purred smugly.
But, thank God, things didn’t go as far as unarmed combat.
Choosing his moment, Asagawa bounded across to the intendant and struck him on the neck with the butt of his gun. The hereditary yoriki’s efficient, virtuoso work was a sheer delight to watch. He didn’t let the limp body fall – he dragged it over to a chair and sat it down. In a single movement he uncoiled the rope that was wound round his waist and quickly tied Suga’s wrists to the armrests of the chair and his ankles to its legs. Then he stuck a gag-bit in his mouth – the hami that was so familiar to Fandorin. In less than twenty seconds the enemy had been bound and gagged in accordance with all the rules of Japanese police craftsmanship.
While the intendant was batting his eyelids as he came round, the victors conferred about what to do next – call the duty officer or wait until the day started and there were plenty of officials in the building. After all, what if the duty officer turned out to be one of Suga’s men?
The discussion was interrupted by low grunting from the chair. The general had come round and was shaking his head: he clearly wished to say something.
‘Well, I won’t take out the hami,’ said Asagawa. ‘Let’s do it this way…’
He tied down the prisoner’s right elbow, but freed the wrist. Then he gave the intendant a sheet of paper and dipped a pen in the inkwell.
‘Write.’
Scattering drops of black ink as he scraped the pen over the paper, Suga wrote downwards from the top of the page.
‘Let me die,’ the inspector translated. ‘Damn you, you ignoble traitor! You’ll swallow you full share of disgrace, and your severed head will hang on a pole for all to see.’
Erast Petrovich’s attitude was more pacific, but only slightly.
‘The diagram,’ he reminded Asagawa. ‘Let him tell us who is signified by the large circle, and then he can die, if that’s what he wants. If he wants to, he’ll kill himself in prison, you won’t be able to stop him. He’ll smash his head open against the wall, like the man with the withered arm, or bite his tongue off at the first interrogation, like the hunchback.’
Asagawa snorted and reluctantly went to get the diagram. When he came back, he stuck the mysterious sheet of paper under the intendant’s nose.
‘If you tell us who led the conspiracy, I’ll let you die. Right here and now. Do you agree?’
After a while – after quite a while – Suga nodded.
‘Is this a diagram of the conspiracy?’