Free EF06 - The State Counsellor by Boris Akunin Page B

talking about the promise almost from the very first moment. There was nothing Green could do about it - he didn't know how to go back on his word.
    He had taken care of the boy and kept him away from the action, but things couldn't go on like that for ever. And after all, Bullfinch was grown up now - eighteen years old. The same age Green had been on that railway bridge.
    Not just yet, he had told himself the previous night, as he prepared for the operation. Next time. And he had ordered Bullfinch to leave for Moscow - supposedly to check on their contacts.
    Bullfinch was a delicate peach colour. What kind of warrior would he make? Though it did sometimes happen that people like that turned out to be genuine heroes. He ought to arrange a baptism of fire for the boy, but the execution of a traitor was not the right place to start.
    'Nobody's going anywhere,' Green said with authority. 'Everybody sleep. I'll take first watch. Rahmet's on in two hours. I'll wake him.'
    'E-eh,' said the former cornet with a smile. 'You're a fine man in every way, Green, only boring. Terror's not the right business for you. You ought to be a bookkeeper in a bank.' But he didn't argue, he knew there was no point.
    They drew lots. Rahmet got the bed to sleep on, Emelya got the divan and Bullfinch got the folded blanket.
    For fifteen minutes he heard talking and laughter from behind the door, and then everything was quiet. After that their host looked out of the study, his gold pince-nez glinting in the semi-darkness, and muttered uncertainly: 'Good evening.'
    Green nodded, but the private lecturer didn't go away.
    Green felt that he had to show some consideration. After all, this was inconvenient for the man, and risky. They gave you penal servitude for harbouring terrorists. He said politely: 'I know we've incommoded you, Semyon Lvovich. Be patient -we'll leave tomorrow.'
    Aronson hesitated, as if there were something he was afraid to ask, and Green guessed that he wanted to talk. After all, he was a cultured man, a member of the intelligentsia. Once he got started, he wouldn't stop until morning.
    Oh no. Firstly, it was not a good idea to strike up a speculative conversation with an unproven individual, and secondly, he had something serious to think over.
    'I'm in your way here,' he said, getting up decisively. 'I'll sit in the kitchen for a while.'
    He sat down on a hard chair beside a curtained entrance (he had already checked it: it was the servant girl's box room). He started thinking about 'TG'. For perhaps the thousandth time in the last few months.
    It had all started in September, a few days after Sable blew himself up - he had thrown a bomb at Khrapov as the General was coming out of a church, but the device had struck the kerb of the pavement and all the shrapnel had been thrown back at the bomber.
    That was when the first letter had come.
    No, it hadn't come; it had been found - on the dining table in the apartment where the Combat Group was quartered at the time, a place to which only very few people had access.
    It wasn't really a group - that was just a name, because after Sable's death Green was the only active warrior left. The helpers and the couriers didn't count.
    The Combat Group had been formed after Green returned to Russia illegally. He had spent a long time assessing where he could be most useful, where he should apply the match so that the blaze would flare up as fiercely as possible. He had transported leaflets, helped to set up an underground printing works, guarded the party congress. All this was necessary, but he had not forged himself into a man of steel in order to do work that anyone could manage.
    His goal had gradually taken clear shape. It was the same as before: terror. After the destruction of the People's Will party the level of militant revolutionary activity had dwindled away to almost nothing. The police was no longer what it had been in the seventies. There were spies and agent provocateurs everywhere.