Flights of Angels (Exit Unicorns Series) (49 page)

“It’s not my virtue I’m worried about as much as my ability to breathe,” Jamie retorted.

“The only weapons tonight will be those of words. Now, will you come along?”

Gregor strode toward the camp boundary and Jamie followed, wondering what sort of reckoning awaited him, because even if it did not come tonight, he knew it would eventually.

The evening held remnants of the day’s warmth, the sun filtering through the fir trees at a low angle. The nights were not as long; the change perceptible by several minutes each day.

Gregor and his
vor
had a meeting place to which everyone else gave a wide berth. It was only a scrubby ring of pines that had somehow survived the mowing down of everything else within the fences. Here they held meetings, drank themselves senseless, and occasionally were permitted bonfires. To Jamie’s knowledge, no one else was ever allowed to enter this sacred ring. He wondered if he was about to be offered up as a virgin sacrifice or if something less ominous was brewing.

“Sit,” Gregor said, as expansively as if he were offering Jamie the depths of a buttery leather armchair, rather than a fir stump bleeding sap.

Jamie sat, glad there was a solid tree trunk behind him to guard his back. Gregor sat across from him, clasping his large hands together and leaning forward so Jamie could feel the aura of brute menace.

“So you are brave, maybe crazy. I see this now—after you sticking that knife to my throat.”

Gregor fished a flask out of his back pocket. “Here. It’s vodka, though it should be fucking poison for what you did to me.”

Jamie took a swallow, knowing it would be one step too far to refuse the drink. A Russian might tolerate a knife to his throat, but a refusal to drink with him was a far graver insult.

“So I tell you this. First I am wanting to kill you—for no one has had the nerve to put a knife to my throat, crawl into my bed and threaten to gut me like a pig before. I am furious, thinking who does this fucking Irishman think he is? But I am not a fool. I see how others are drawn to you. I see that if I do not make truce, that even if I kill you, someone then will kill me. Probably the old man, maybe the whore. The whore I can manage, the old man I am not so certain about. Because the old man has those eyes. They see right into and through you, and he does not care any longer if he lives or dies, which makes him very dangerous.”

Jamie made no comment, for it was an exact and unsparing portrait of Nikolai.

“I owe you for sparing my life that night. You could have killed me, but you don’t. This makes me a little worried. For what, Gregor, I ask myself, has this man spared you the knife? And I cannot find the answer, and this itself worries me more, so that I am losing sleep.”

“Really? I slept like a baby after threatening to gut you like a pig.”

Gregor threw his head back and laughed. “You are bastard, Jamie. I am liking this very much. Don’t look scared, my friend, I am liking this in a man—not a
peduh
.”

“You promised to be the
peduh
, if you remember correctly,” Jamie said.

“You are making joke, no? This is good. You are relaxing and understanding Gregor better now.”

“Are you going to tell me what you want? Why we’re out here?”

“Not to rush, good man. Talk takes time. Have another drink first.”

Jamie sighed, but took the drink. If the bastard wanted a pissing match, he would give him one. He’d practically been suckled on whiskey and Connemara Mist carried a punch more subtle than vodka but no less lethal. Some men needed to go toe to toe in this way, or they would never trust you. Though Jamie was not thrilled about having to prove his manhood by drinking himself into a paralytic state, he understood the psychology behind it and knew he couldn’t afford to walk away from this challenge, for there was more than a hangover at stake.

Gregor, it seemed, was in a conversational mood.

“I am
bezprizorni
—this is a word you are knowing, Yasha Yakovich?”

“Yes,” Jamie replied, for he knew his Russian history well.

The
Bezprizorniye
were originally the ‘wild children’ who had roamed the roads and forests, the cold cities and abandoned byways of Stalin’s Russia after the purges began. Children who had been orphaned by Stalin’s fist coming down on thousands of people: mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters… for Stalin’s fear and rage knew no boundaries and no one was safe under the aegis of Papa Joseph.

The
Bezprizorniye
had morphed through need, and the feral anarchy that will come with abandonment of all social mores and parental affection, into a criminal underclass from which the
urkas
would often pluck promising candidates to come up through the hierarchy of the ruling
mafiya
. The
Bezprizorniye
formed their own mafia as well, and such criminal enterprises became the only family these children knew. The ties were forged, literally and figuratively, in blood. They were also unbreakable outside of the release of death.

“I am pickpocket when I am small. Children make the best ones for their fingers are soft and light. But I also have a wolf. She makes me stand out, so I have to leave her each morning chained up. She howls like I am killing her but I can’t take her into the city with me. I work the streets of Kiev, but I live like animal on the outskirts. This suits me though—I am half wild thing, much as I am now. Then one day I pick the pocket of the wrong man. I do not know that he is a feared gangster, that he is the
vor y zakone,
the vor that rules over all other vors in Kiev. His name is Viktor and I think he will kill me when he catches me with my hand in his pocket. At the very least, I know he is going to break my fingers. Suddenly my wolf shows up out of nowhere, growling and walking slow toward him, threatening, making it clear she will rip out his throat. Viktor tells me to call her off, but I just shrug and say, ‘No, because then you kill me, or hurt my hands and my hands are my bread.

“He swears he will not hurt me but I still am not trusting him so I make him let go of me and back up behind my wolf. Then she and I, we walk backwards, keeping an eye on him and finally when I think we are out of harm’s way, we run. I am a fool to think this man will not find me, but I do not know he is
the
Vor, and that many shake in fear at the simple utterance of his name.

“He does find me a week later. This time I know I am dead. There is no way out from such a man. But he is impressed with my nerve and wants me to work for him. He offers me a place at his table, a bed under his roof. I say yes, though I am still, you understand, a fierce thing from growing up in the woods with only a wolf as my companion.

“Once Viktor Dmitriovich takes me under his roof I am treated as family, as a member of the vor, whose ties are stronger than blood. I have to wait until I am much older to be sponsored in, and to become a prince among thieves takes even longer.

“I am sent to school. I find it very hard to sit still in the desks and I cannot abide the discipline and authority of the teachers, so Viktor Dmitriovich has me tutored. I still pick pockets, and once I am older, I move to larger theft, bigger crimes. Always, I defer to Viktor Dmitriovich, for I owe him the loyalty of blood.

“This is how I grow, this is what makes me a man, and so I know no life but that of thief and enforcer. I spend much time in prison. This too makes man’s shell grow harder. I am strong though. The bastards put me in chains for a year. I cannot walk far enough to piss without having to sit in it later and there is not enough chain to lie down for sleep. This does not break me. Because the vor are my family and I will not betray those ties and I do not recognize the authority of the Soviet. The vor and my own strength are all I have. Now only strength is left. So I make family wherever I am, with those that gather round a man such as myself, a man such as yourself.”

They had come, Jamie saw, to the crux of what Gregor wanted to say to him. The subtext being,
‘I see you as a threat and I take threats very personally.’

“I am a vain man at times. This I know about myself—vain of my power, vain of my position, but I am no fool and so I see that you are a man who draws others without effort. I see the camp dividing along these lines already, slowly, but it is happening. I decide that I have two choices—to kill you, or to call a truce. I kill you and I am going to spend much longer in this hellhole than I am already condemned to. And I am man enough to admit where my weakness lies—and such as you are is a very big weakness for me.”

“Such as I am?” Jamie said, and took another swallow of the vodka before passing it back to Gregor. He knew what the weakness was. He had seen it in the man’s eyes clearly.

“Uncle Viktor is always saying to me to stamp out all weakness, to take that which lures you most and put fire to it. For others this is drugs, alcohol, gambling, women. For me, it is beauty—all beauty is my weakness—buildings, music, art, men, women. I crave it, want to take it into myself, have it for my own soul. I want it like a junkie wants heroin. I cannot stop the craving in my veins. I think if I can consume enough of it, with my eyes, with my mouth, with my body then I will be satiated, will know some peace, will perhaps have beauty always inside, will be beautiful myself. This is not how such a drug works, of course, it only makes me want more and more and I can never fill that place that yearns for beauty.”

He stretched his arms out, flexing them as though the ghost of the chains he had once worn still lay there, heavy upon his wrists.

“Your beauty has heat, it has passion. You have done and seen many, many things and yet it has not jaded you, I am thinking.”

The statement seemed to be in the form of an observation rather than a question, so Jamie didn’t answer to it.

“And this beauty, this experience,” Gregor sighed, “is only for women.”

“Yes,” Jamie agreed firmly, “it is only for women.”

“That is a pity,” Gregor said, dark eyes reflecting the feral wildness he had never left behind.

“The women don’t seem to think so,” Jamie said, but his tone did not match the lightness of his words.

“No, I am sure they don’t.” Gregor held him in a hard look for a moment and then changed direction.

“The tattoo on your back—the good Comrade has one to match.”

“Yes, we got them at the same time,” Jamie said.

“Why?”

“Because we were drunk, and because we’d done something incredibly stupid earlier that night and in the way of the young and stupid, felt the need to commemorate the moment.”

“He is good friend to you?”

“Yes.”

“Yet, you end up here because of him. This doesn’t make you angry? Make you want to kill him, maybe take his woman?” Gregor quirked an eyebrow at this last suggestion. Jamie ignored it.

“How do you know that Comrade Valueve has the same tattoo as me?”

Gregor shrugged. “I see him one time with the woman. He is naked, and his back is to me. Nothing is secret in the camp, nothing.”

“You watched them having sex?”

“Yes, was nothing else going on at the time, so I watch. Your friend is very beautiful too, not quite like you, but still worth watching. I don’t like him so much though. His soul is missing.”

“His soul is missing?” Jamie echoed, wondering exactly what Gregor meant.

“There is something very cold in him. I see it in his eyes. When he looks at you, it’s like there is a snake curled up at the bottom of a lake, waiting to strike. Myself, if I am going to kill you, I tell you. I put knife in your belly while looking in your eyes. He would send flunkies to do this work and a man would never get to look his own death in the face, and die like a man should, with honesty.”

“He is my friend,” Jamie said in a tone that warned the man to let it lie.

Gregor held up one hand in mock surrender. “I am only making an observation and saying that your being in this camp may be more than meets the eye.”

He stood then, making it clear their interview was over. “So do we have a truce then, Yasha Yakovich?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

“Then yes, you have a truce.”

Jamie stood and extended his hand. Gregor allowed several seconds to lapse before he took it, making it clear that he was in the position of ascendency and that Jamie would do well to remember it.

Gregor walked from the circle first, turning his back to Jamie so Jamie would know the man did not fear him. Just beyond the border of the trees he turned back, eyes cold as black ice.

“One more thing—end of story so to speak. My wolf—Viktor made me kill her when I was twelve years old to show my loyalty to his command. I loved that wolf, you understand? That wolf was my only friend for years. She protected me, slept by my side, ate with me. My wolf and I are one blood—but I killed her when I had to.”

Jamie nodded, holding the man’s eyes with his own, showing him the message had been received and understood.

Chapter Thirty-five
July 1973
Camp Wife

If the camp could be compared to a spider’s web
then Svetlana, the OC’s wife, was the black widow at the center of it. Which made Jamie, at this juncture, the juicy fly on the edges of the web, struggling in layers of sticky silk, making his predicament more precarious with every flail of his limbs. He had felt it from the first, the way one felt the various tugs and disturbances in the weft of one’s own universe.

Shura had warned him. Jamie had visited the infirmary one afternoon after cutting his thumb with a barking axe and ran into Svetlana just outside the doors. He stopped, as was expected. She stalked directly to him and bent her head over his thumb. The cut was not serious, neither ligaments nor vessels had been severed, but she clucked over it as though the digit were in danger of falling off before personally escorting him into the infirmary.

“You will look after him, Comrade Shura,” she said. “We would hate for such a lovely man to bear scars.”

Shura raised an eyebrow at him behind her back. Jamie swallowed, for her finger was drawing the smallest of circles in his palm, its message unmistakable.