Rasputin's Bastards (3 page)

It has nothing to do with
. . .

. . . with the snow-covered tarmac outside a low cement block barracks building, beneath a clear sub-arctic sky and the rivers of dust at the base of a cave in Afghanistan and lights that flashed and Czernochov and trigonometry and . . .

. . . that game of floor hockey.

The thoughts slipped away as fast as they came, into a storm of memories — and Alexei opened his eyes.

He was looking at the little bedside table. It was cheap — made out of pressed board covered in dirty white laminate. It looked to have been originally in a child’s room, because the laminate was covered in stickers that someone had tried to scrape off with a pallet knife. The only two that were left was a brilliant green one of a cartoonish frog, next to a bright blue hairy monster with goggly eyes and three thick fingers on each hand, that did not look threatening at all.

Alexei smiled. He liked the blue thing. It reminded him of more innocent times, of childhood.

“Cute monster,” he whispered, and reached out to touch the sticker with his thumb.

Finally, Alexei pulled the blankets from his bare legs and swung his feet onto the deck. The dizziness came again, but it wasn’t as bad this time, so Alexei rode it out. Whoever it was had put him to bed had taken his briefs as well as his pants, and the cold cabin air actually seemed to help. He put his weight onto the balls of his feet, and holding onto the top bunk for support pulled himself upright. And stood there, facing the bunk, leaning forward on both arms like an athlete warming up for a race. A shaky athlete, after a bad night of too much vodka and maybe one too many rounds with an over-energetic whore — but still, Alexei thought, an athlete.

“Not so bad,” he said aloud.

“Depends on where you’re standing.”

Alexei started and turned — hands instinctively leaping down to cover himself.

It was the woman — Heather, he remembered, the one who had hauled him downstairs. He recognized her mainly by the dreadlocks and the eyes. The shapeless raincoat was gone, replaced by a snug-fitting pair of tights and a matched black sweater.

Her eyes flickered down Alexei’s torso. They finally settled on his hands.

“You’re hiding something,” she said, shutting the door behind her.

“I — beg your pardon?” Alexei stumbled a bit, and finally managed to duck his head and sit down — knees together, hands still clasped on his lap.
Like a nervous schoolboy
, Alexei thought.

Heather smiled, and when she blinked her eyes had left his groin. She met his eye steadily.

“This amnesia game of yours,” she said, “is what I’m talking about.” She lowered her voice, to just above a whisper: “I overheard your talk with Mr. Gibson.”

“Mr. Gibson?”

“Holden.”

“Ah.” Alexei crossed his legs, and reached over with one hand to draw a blanket over his lap.

“Holden can be a prick,” she said, crossing the tiny room so that she stood directly over him. Now her tone went playful. “But you’re used to dealing with pricks, I bet.”

“You meet all kinds,” said Alexei.

“ — in your business,” she finished for him.

Now Alexei was quiet. He looked up at Heather with raised eyebrows, and for that instant her face was a mirror, throwing back his whatever-can-you-mean expression with one of her own.

“You can’t remember how you hit your head,” she said finally. “Or so you say. But maybe you remember how you got this.” Her hand fell onto his shoulder, and the long string of scar tissue that went nearly as far as the base of his neck.

“Or the one on your ass,” she said. “Left cheek. Looks like a piece of shrapnel hit you.”

Actually, it had been a knife, and the scar was a lot uglier than the wound that had made it. But Alexei merely sighed, reached up and put his hand on top of hers. “You,” he said, “have been peeking.”

“Not just at your ass,” she said, and reached under her sweater. “I found this in your pants pocket.” She pulled out what looked like an oversized black pen, but Alexei recognized it immediately. He had been in pretty bad shape in the dingy, so he could excuse himself for not noticing — but he was sure they had taken it, along with the Glock and the butterfly knife, before setting him adrift. Alexei grabbed for it, but she stepped away too quickly, and lifted the weapon above her head.

“Give that to me!”

Any chance they give you — take it. Escape is your duty.

He jumped to his feet, the blanket falling away as he did so, and — the old instincts kicking in — he dove at her. She tried to twist out of his way, but he anticipated her action and caught her under an arm. She reached for the door with her free hand, but Alexei spun them both around so that his own body blocked her. In the same move, he reached up with his free hand and twisted Heather’s wrist. She gave a little cry, and the weapon fell to the deck.

“Wow,” she said, gasping for breath. The two of them were locked in a bizarre parody of a tango clinch — he with one arm locked under her arm and around her waist, his other hand holding hers high above their heads.

As they stood panting, Alexei realized with a blush just how close they were.

“What are you?” she murmured. “Russian mafia? KGB?”

“Not these days,” he whispered, before he could think. “No,” he said at volume. “There is no Russian mafia. I’m not KGB.”

She smiled at that. “All right,” she said. “It’s coming back to you.”

Alexei blinked. He heard a noise in his ears, like tinnitus. Like a radio, swooping up a blank stretch on the AM dial.

Some of them will try sex. It is the next thing after comfort, but it is much more difficult to combat.

Ah ha! It was Kolyokov! Alexei remembered now. Old Fyodor Kolyokov, talking in the upper lecture hall while the autumn wind whipped up a new snow from the shipyards. “I will tell you about sex now,” said Kolyokov, who had dimmed the classroom lights and switched on the overhead projector. “There will be a time when you are on your own, in a weakened state — perhaps a prisoner, perhaps simply drunk. Old Kolyokov will not be there to advise you. So you must understand about sex.”

“Hey! I’m talking to you.”

Heather pulled herself away just enough to get her free hand in the space between them, and took him into her sweat-slick palm. Alexei shut his eyes, let her draw a low, grateful moan from him as she worked him harder still. He let her other hand go, and wrapped both his arms around her middle, so that his hands moved up and underneath her sweater, then crept again beneath the elastic of the tights. She didn’t seem to mind — she gave a pleased-sounding little moan — but she squirmed anyway, so that before Alexei knew it, his hands were back outside, and empty. He opened his eyes, to find himself looking directly into hers, and when he moved forward to kiss her, she pulled back too quickly. In the same motion, she released him.

“Lie down,” she commanded.

“All right.” Alexei returned to his bunk — first scooping up the weapon, which he tucked against his wrist. Heather came over and sat on the bunk beside him.

“I’m not going to fuck you,” she said matter-of-factly.

“All right,” said Alexei. “What are you going to do? Torture me?”

“Depends.”

“On what?”

“On how forthcoming you are. What’s your name?”

Alexei shrugged. “I can’t remember.”

“Bullshit.”

Alexei looked at her levelly. “Are you having instincts too?” he asked.

“Funny guy,” she sneered. “And you say you’re not KGB anymore.”

“I don’t work for the KGB,” said Alexei. “I’m pretty sure about that.”

“That wasn’t what I asked,” she said, and motioned to the weapon in his hand. “What’s that thing?”

Alexei smiled at her. No harm there.

“Would you like me to demonstrate?”

“If you need to.”

“It is called an asp.” With a flick of his wrist, Alexei extended the asp to its full eighteen inches. The black steel ball at the end of it gleamed in the light, and made an ethereal line of reflection as Alexei flicked it back and forth on its steel-spring shaft. “You can buy it at the shopping mall,” he said. “Legal in your country, and pretty dangerous in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.”

Heather nodded, apparently satisfied. “Good. Now we’ll try again — if you don’t work for the KGB, who do you work for?”

Alexei sighed.

“I am,” he said finally, “between employers.”

“Recently so, I take it.”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit,” she said. “You’re here for Holden. From Time-Warner, right?”

“Think what you like.” Alexei could feel himself starting to get pissed off. “What the hell do you mean, Time-Warner? The television people?”

“The magazine people.” Heather nodded as she spoke, raised her eyebrows and lowered her voice — as though she were revealing some sinister truth. It only pissed Alexei off more.

“Whatever you say,” he mumbled.

“He’s a real prick, you know.” Heather’s voice dropped, and she leaned toward him as she spoke. Her hand fell casually on his hip, and her forefinger inscribed an arc on the flesh there. “If you’re not here for him — you should be. You should see what he does to people. To little
kids
.”

“Little kids,” repeated Alexei, and thought about that.

“And — he’s getting
worse
,” said Heather. The nail dug in — not quite painfully.

“I’m not in the mood,” he said, and lifted her hand away.

She stood up, face blank.

“Understandable,” she said, before she turned to the door, “I guess. I guess I’m not in the mood either, then.”

When she left, closing the door firmly, Alexei put a hand behind his head and regarded the asp, which she’d thoughtfully left him. Why did he still have it? The Romanians should have found it on him — they were professionals in every other respect, and a professional didn’t leave his enemy with a weapon in his pocket. Even an innocuous little weapon such as this.

He took hold of the ball at the asp’s tip, and pushed it back into the shaft, so it became like a pen again. He bounced it once in his palm, and tucked it under his pillow.

It scarcely mattered now, of course; there were other, more immediate things to worry about.

But he still couldn’t stop asking himself:
What the hell was their angle? Crazy damn Romanians. They had to have an angle.

Alexei had been working with Mrs. Kontos-Wu for nearly three months when they boarded the Romanians’ cabin cruiser outside Boston, and nearly all of that time was spent in travel. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was an associate with Wolfe-Jordan, which had meant nothing to Alexei when he came to New York following an extended stay in Belarus. His work there hadn’t left much time for reading newspapers — particularly the financial sections where Wolfe-Jordan might have rated mention.

Because of that, her executive assistant Stephen Haber had been resolutely unimpressed with Alexei. He peered over his resume with undisguised disdain, the day they’d sat across from one another in a little hotel conference room in mid-town Manhattan.

“You worked with the KGB,” said Stephen, “until 1992. Am I wasting my time asking your duties?”

Alexei shrugged. “No,” he said. “I worked in Moscow in an office for two years in the early 1990s. It was not dramatic work. Before that — I was in foreign work. That is harder to talk about.”

“We’re all friends here,” said Stephen, in a tone that suggested that they weren’t friends at all.

“Okay,” said Alexei. “I spent time in Pakistan. East Germany. Czechoslovakia. Little bit in Poland.”

“What about Chechnya?”

“After my time.”

“Afghanistan?”

Alexei didn’t answer that one.

“Well.” Stephen was just a kid. He was probably twenty-five, but if Alexei ran into him on the street he wouldn’t have guessed him any older than twenty. Here, it was clear he’d managed to acquire the unpleasant confidence of many more years. Stephen tilted his head back and looked at Alexei hard — like he was trying to read his mind. “You won’t be doing much business in Afghanistan.”

“Okay.”

“But you may be working in a lot of other countries. Any problems with that?”

“I like to travel.”

“Good. You ever kill someone?”

Quiet for a moment. Alexei looked at the presentation board behind Stephen. There was a smear of blue ink across the bottom — Alexei thought he could make out the letters D and L in it.

“You ever kill someone?” asked Stephen again.

“Sure. Everyone in KGB killed someone.”

Stephen rolled his eyes and made a note on a yellow tablet.

“You were in Belarus most recently I hear.”

Alexei nodded. “Sure.”

Stephen eyed him. “You found good work with the
Mafiya
.”

“Sure,” said Alexei. “That’s all the work there is for KGB people in Belarus. Only killing people who piss off
Mafiya
.” He held up his hands and wiggled his fingers. “That and washing the blood from our hands. Two hours a night.”

Stephen smiled thinly. “Funny,” he said.

Alexei smiled back. “Anyway,” he said, “there is no Russian mafia.”

Stephen looked at him. “You talk like someone who doesn’t want this job.”

“Oh,” said Alexei, “that’s not true.”

Stephen shook his head. “You poor bastard,” he said.

Alexei took it to mean that he’d blown the interview. Stephen Haber wouldn’t be calling again — not after a self-sabotaging interview like that. Thinking about it later, he had to wonder if maybe something inside him simply warned him away — was doing its best to keep him clear of this American workplace with its nursery school management.

But he’d been wrong. The next day, Alexei got a call and they met in the hotel bar — empty even of staff in the early afternoon. Alexei sipped a ginger ale. Stephen fiddled with an unlit cigarette and seemed nervous.

“You really don’t need to know this,” he’d explained, “but you’re working with one of the best. Mrs. Kontos-Wu is very hands-on. She doesn’t just pick companies out of the air. She doesn’t just sit in the office. She looks. That’s why we brought you in — Mrs. Kontos-Wu needs discreet protection; these companies are in pretty unstable places, some of them —
politically
unstable, you get what I mean.”