The Diamond Chariot

Free The Diamond Chariot by Boris Akunin

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Authors: Boris Akunin
his other ear. ‘Of course, our counter-espionage is pretty lousy, right enough, but this is just plain cheeky: setting themselves up in comfort like this, five minutes away from the Nicholas railway station. Wouldn’t I just love to nab the little darlings right now. A pity it’s out of our jurisdiction. The Okhrana boys and the provincial gendarmes will eat us alive. If they were on the railway right of way, now that would be a different matter.’
    ‘I tell you what we can do,’ Lisitsky suggested. ‘We’ll call our platoon and put the dacha under siege, but we won’t take it, we’ll inform the police. Then they won’t make any fuss about it.’
    Fandorin didn’t join in the discussion – he was turning his head this way and that, trying to spot something. He fixed his gaze on a freshly trimmed wooden pole sticking up out of the ground beside the road.
    ‘A telephone pole … We could listen to what they’re saying …’
    ‘How?’ the lieutenant colonel asked in surprise.
    ‘Tap the line, from the pole.’
    ‘Sorry, Erast Petrovich, I don’t have a clue about technical matters. What does “tap the line” mean?
    Fandorin, however, didn’t bother to explain anything – he had already made his decision.
    ‘One of the platforms on our Nicholas line is c-close by here …’
    ‘That’s right, the Petrovsko-Razumovskoe way station.’
    ‘There must be a telephone apparatus there. Send a gendarme. But be quick, don’t waste a second. He runs in, cuts the wire right at the wall, takes the telephone and comes straight back. No wasting time on explanations, he just shows his identification document, that’s all. At the double, now!’
    A few moments later they heard the tramping of rapidly receding boots as the corporal rushed off to carry out his mission. About ten minutes after that he came dashing back with the severed telephone and wire.
    ‘Lucky it’s so long,’ the engineer said happily, and astounded the gendarmes by taking off his elegant coat, clutching a folding penknife in his teeth and shinning up the pole.
    After fiddling with the wires for a bit, he came back down, holding the earpiece in his hands, with its wire leading up into the air.
    ‘Take it,’ he said to the staff captain. ‘Since you know Polish, you can do the listening.’
    Lisitsky was filled with admiration.
    ‘What a brilliant idea, Mr Engineer! How incredible that no one ever thought of it before! Why, you could set up a special office at the telephone exchange! Listen to what suspicious individuals are saying! What tremendous benefit for the fatherland! And so very civilised, in the spirit of technological progr …’ The officer broke off in mid-word, raised a warning finger and informed them in a terrible whisper, ‘They’re calling! The central exchange!’
    The lieutenant colonel and the engineer leaned forward eagerly.
    ‘A man … asking for number 398 …’ Lisitsky whispered jerkily. ‘Another man … Speaking Polish … The first one’s arranging to meet … No, it’s a gathering … On Novo-Basmannaya Street … In the Varvarin Company building … An operation! He said “operation”! That’s it, he cut the connection.’
    ‘What kind of operation?’ asked Danilov, grabbing his deputy by the shoulder.
    ‘He didn’t say. Just “the operation”, that’s all. At midnight, and it’s almost half past nine already. No wonder they’re bustling about like that.’
    ‘On Basmannaya? The Varvarin Company Building?’ Erast Petrovich repeated, also whispering without even realising it. ‘What’s there, do you know?’
    The officers exchanged glances and shrugged.
    ‘We need an address b-book.’
    They sent the same corporal running back to the way station – to dart into the office, grab the All Moscow guidebook off the desk and leg it back as quickly as possible.
    ‘The men at the way station will think the railway gendarme service is full of head cases,’ the lieutenant colonel lamented,

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