Page 2 of The Lost Future of Pepperharrow

Pyotr snorted. ‘Vladivostok? Don’t be stupid—’

‘He’s about to finalise an order for forty ironclads from Liverpool,’ Mori said over him, without raising his voice. ‘The British will sail them to Nagasaki in February. Each ship will take two hundred sailors.’

There was a long silence. This was not the kind of information they had ever, ever given each other before. They’d mentioned it if their respective mad nationalists were planning anything especially explosive, but that was small stuff. Never on this scale.

‘Mori,’ Pyotr said at last, ‘why are you telling me?’

‘Because Kuroda needs managing. If he starts invading new places and spouting rubbish about the Glorious Empire of the Sun, he’ll take Korea first and then China, and before you know it we’ll be at war with America.’ Mori stared into his coffee for a strange second. Now that Pyotr was looking at him properly, he didn’t seem like himself. His collarbones were taut, even under his shirt and waistcoat. The tendons in the backs of his hands showed when he shifted his grip on the cup, as close to the surface as a ballerina’s, and Pyotr felt protective. ‘I’d prefer not to be at war with America,’ Mori said eventually. He tilted his eyes up again. ‘They’ll win, and then you’ll have no buffer zone between Russia and the United States.’

‘I’ll look into it,’ Pyotr promised faintly. He hesitated. ‘But you know what the Minister will say, don’t you? That if Kuroda’s ordering new ships, then the old ones are clapped out. He’s going to say that this would be the moment to take Nagasaki.’

Mori tipped his head. He was too well bred to shrug. ‘If Kuroda is fighting for Nagasaki, he is not building an empire.’

‘Christ,’ said Pyotr. He couldn’t help glancing around. The Japanese must have been livid that Mori was even here. No secret service, surely, let a retired operative set up in an enemy state and invite his old opposite number to tea without at least having him followed. ‘Mori, do you understand how stupid this is? If they even suspect this is coming from you, you’re in the Winter Canal tied to a brick.’ It was stating the obvious, but Mori couldn’t possibly have thought it through. Rich people never thought about consequences.

‘I trust you,’ Mori said quietly.

Pyotr struggled. The shape of it felt wrong. ‘You say he needs managing, but this can’t just be from your great moral sense of the good of nations. What are you really doing?’

Mori set his cup down too precisely. It didn’t make a sound on the saucer. He was losing his colour.

Pyotr frowned. ‘Are you all right?’

Mori nodded, but it looked strained. ‘Something is about to happen to me and it’s going to look bad, but I am all right, so you don’t need to call a doctor or anything. But … if you could perhaps see me into the cab?’

‘What?’ Pyotr said blankly. Behind Mori, beyond the window, a cab glided up to the edge of the pavement. For the first time, he noticed that Mori had a travelling bag with him. He always packed lightly, and Pyotr knew, without a doubt, that it would be everything. He was leaving St Petersburg. ‘What do you mean, bad?’

‘I’m about to lose all my Russian.’ He was pushing his fingernails into the tablecloth. Behind him, the owls had straightened up.

‘You’re about to what? What are you talking about?’

‘It’s going, I’m sorry,’ Mori said, and Pyotr stared at him, because he was right; he was losing his Russian. He had an accent now, and he was having to talk slowly, like he was remembering the words from a textbook. It was nothing like the natural way he’d spoken thirty seconds before. ‘Can you … tell the driver that I need the railway station?’

‘Mori,’ Pyotr tried, shocked. He went around to him and caught his elbows, and felt a slow wave of horror when he saw that Mori’s eyelashes were full of tears. Poison, it had to be; some kind of toxin that affected the mind. They’d come for him after all. ‘We need to get you to a hospital …’

‘Ah, cab for Baron Mori?’ a beautifully uniformed doorman interrupted.

‘I don’t need a hospital,’ Mori said to Pyotr, in English now. Pyotr could follow it, just about. ‘I just need to get back to London. This is just – a condition I’ve always had. No need to worry.’

‘Well – are you sure?’

‘I’m sure. Thank you.’

‘Just to Tsarskoselsky station, please,’ Pyotr said helplessly to the doorman, and handed over Mori’s bag. The clockwork octopus, which had been stealing all the spoons from the free tables, hurried back and swarmed up Mori’s arm.

‘Send me a telegram,’ Pyotr called after Mori. It was so cold today that someone had changed the breakfast menus by hand, because on the short walk between the market and the kitchen, the eggs had frozen in their shells. This was not the weather to travel in even if you were fighting fit. ‘Tell me when you get safe to Paris, all right?’

Mori nodded and let the doorman chaperone him away.

Pyotr went to the window to see the cab go. At exactly the same moment the horse clopped out into the white road, the owls glided away too. Pyotr watched for a long time, trying to work out what in God’s name had just happened.

Two days later, the Russian fleet began what they called practice manoeuvres just off the southern coast of Korea. To anybody watching for the shape of arranged things, what was really remarkable was that the exercises began just in time for Kiyotaka Kuroda, the new Prime Minister of Japan, to see them himself.

He hadn’t been Prime Minister for long. His bones still thought they belonged to a naval officer, someone solid and normal, and definitely not someone with an entire staff who thought he should be wearing a carnation in his lapel. It was good to be back on the deck of a ship, inspecting harbour defences: he knew how to do that, at least. Spread out across the shore, the Nagasaki docks were magnificent: an industrial maze of cranes and dry docks, steelworks, and vast piers for the navy destroyers. Galaxies of blowtorches winked and flared, and men swarmed over one of the ships in for repair.

But it was only magnificent if you’d never seen Liverpool. Kuroda had.

His least favourite person in the world pointed out that it all looked splendid. Arinori was the Minister for Education. He wore a pink carnation. That, as far as Kuroda was concerned, should have disqualified him from government.