Rasputin's Bastards (39 page)

“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

“I should ask the same, yes?” The corpse stood up, primly moving one hand over its private parts while it beckoned her with the other. “Come down. I don’t bite.”

“Fuck off,” she said, taking a step backwards. “I’m going to kill myself and you can’t stop me!”

“Why would I stop you?” said the corpse. “Aren’t we both dead already?”

Heather squinted down the steps at him. “Do I know you?”

The corpse squinted back. “I don’t know,” he said. “You are — one of the children, yes? Maybe you know me as an ‘old bastard’? Ha!” The corpse threw both hands into the air in a sudden revelation. His lake-shrunk member bobbed grotesquely between his legs. “That is it, yes? You have come to see horrible old Kolyokov off, before his spirit dissolves into the nothingness of the ether.”

“Kol-yokov?” Heather started back down the stairs. If this was a trick to get her to stay a while longer at summer camp — well what could she say? It was just intriguing enough to work. “Sounds Russian. You another KGB guy?”

The corpse was pacing in circles now, hands waving in the air with extravagant sarcasm. “Yes, yes, mock poor Fyodor Kolyokov as he vanishes into the Godless void. For what is he, but a pestilent bastard who would only harm his young prodigies? A foolish old monster! Well — we will see if you like your benighted Babushka any better!”

And with that, the corpse Fyodor Kolyokov whirled on a pale, rotting heel and headed back for the water. “I should have known better!” he spat as the lake water lapped higher and higher on his thick calves.

“Wait!” Heather started to run down the little stretch of beach.

Fyodor Kolyokov waved a hand dismissively and stepped in up to his waist. “What does it matter?” he muttered. “I am long enough dead that I should have the good grace to die properly. Fuck, this is cold on my balls! For a warm brine again . . .”

Heather was running full tilt when she hit the water, and her momentum sent a silvery wave of it smack into Kolyokov’s pale dead ass. He squealed, clutched at his sagging butt and stumbled — but before he could fall into the water, Heather had him by the arm. His flesh felt like loose rubber, but she didn’t let go, and step by step pulled him cursing and thrashing back to the shore.

“You are not going anywhere,” she said through gritted teeth as they stumbled back through the wet silt at the water’s edge.

“How true,” he spat. “Trapped in incessant metaphor . . . I am fixed. Denied even a clean passing.”

“Oh fuck off and get over yourself.” Heather gave him a two-handed push in his middle, and sent Kolyokov sprawling on his ass in the shallow water. “Now. What do you know about this Babushka? It’s all I ever hear around this fucking village.”

Kolyokov smiled down at her and shook his head. “What a mouth on you, little girl,” he said. “Babushka? That is what they call her now, yes. This woman you have tried so hard to rejoin. And she’s trapped you here, hasn’t she? Like a moth in a jar.”

“I wasn’t trying to rejoin anyone,” said Heather. “But you’re right about one thing: I am a moth in a jar. Every time I let slip.”

Kolyokov narrowed his eyes and his smile faltered. “I see.” He stopped, ankle-deep in water, and pulled his hand back. He regarded her appraisingly. “Your American accent is very good, little girl. Vladimir taught you that, did he?”

“That little shit?” Heather laughed. “No way. And I don’t have an accent. You’re the one with the accent.”

Kolyokov nodded, and slowly, his smile reasserted itself.

“I see,” he said again.

“See what? What the fuck is going on?”

But Heather was shouting it at the old zombie’s back, as he climbed up the rocky beach to the stairs. As he climbed, it seemed as though the colour returned to his flesh, in tiny patches on his back and his ass — like watery ink drops, spreading themselves over age-mottled parchment.

They settled at the top of the stairs, where they had a view of the lake. Kolyokov said he wanted to be somewhere where he could watch the horizon, and once they sat down he never took his eyes off it. It was as though he thought he was a sailor, watching for signs of a coming storm.

“Now,” said Kolyokov, “tell me how old you are.”

“Twenty-seven.”

“Very good.” He laughed. “You say it like a little girl still: ‘How old are you my dear?’ ‘I am almost SIX!’”

“Fuck off. My voice isn’t that high.”

“No,” said Kolyokov. “It isn’t. Because this is all bullshit now, isn’t it? Your voice, your size. You’re living in something like a memory. You’re really a grown woman. But just now someone’s stuffed you into yourself as a child. Do you know why that would be?”

“Tell me.”

“It makes you feel weaker,” said Kolyokov.

They sat quietly for a moment. Heather glared at Kolyokov. “I’m not weak,” she said. “If I wanted to, I could make you do anything in the world.”

Kolyokov looked down at her from the corner of his still putrefied eye. “By beating me up? Or maybe by seducing me? Maybe out in the real world of Physick. But here? You’re too little to do either.” Now he looked away, casting his eye back to the lake. He squinted at it — like he was appraising a painting. “This is a very pleasant metaphor,” he said. “What does it signify?”

“Metaphor?”

“I’m sorry. You’re confused in here, and I am not helping any. Just tell me — what does this place signify? It seems familiar.”

“I’m not confused. This place is
bullshit
. It signifies complete
bullshit
. It’s a
bullshit
summer camp in
bullshit
California that Holden took us to when I was little — it was run by the Transcendental Meditation people and they — ”

“Ah! Of course! CIA.”

“Are you going to let me finish?” Heather stood up. Her fists were angry balls at her sides. “What do you mean, CIA?”

“The camp was a CIA camp,” said Kolyokov, “if it’s the one I’m thinking of. And yes . . . yes, I think it is. I think I have been here.”

“What?”

“It was before you were here. It was probably before you were born. The CIA was using this lakeside camp to train sleepers. Quite a few of them passed under the gates of Kamp Kiwichiching before they shut it down.” He stood up. “Yes! I remember it now! That is why it was so familiar! The lake I only saw by moonlight, as we swooped in. We were very nearly captured here — they had placed their dream-walking sentries about the camp. But the Americans were amateurs at this sort of thing in those days. They had barely mastered what they called ‘remote viewing’ then.”

“No,” said Heather. She didn’t like where this was going. She took a deep breath and went on. “This is a Transcendental Meditation camp.
Transcendental Meditation
. Hippie Pete runs this camp. Not the CIA.”

“This,” said Kolyokov, “is an imaginary place. And the place it was modelled after? It was never a Transcendental Meditation camp. It was a place for making sleepers. People who would do their master’s bidding, without even knowing it were so. Sleepers would spend years here. That’s how long it took in those days, to lay in the metaphors. No simple business.”

Heather swatted at Kolyokov’s flank. “Fuck off!” she yelled. “
Mi mi mi mi!
”

“Ah. You are attempting a mnemonic block. Clever girl.” Kolyokov smiled sadly. “But that won’t work here. And it won’t work out there for long, either, once the people who are controlling you figure out a way around it.”

Heather felt herself beginning to cry. A part of her wondered why this was so. What had she really to be sad or upset about, talking to this old zombie about two groups of people — one who walked in their dreams, the other who just seemed to sleep all the time? It was obviously bullshit.

Wasn’t it?

Kolyokov put a hand on her shoulder. “You’re working it out now, aren’t you? The fact that you may not be the person you thought you were. It is common to cry out when such a realization comes upon you.”

“What do you mean, ‘such a realization’?”

Kolyokov knelt in front of her.

“Such a realization,” he said softly, “that you are a sleeper and not a dream-walker. And because of that, you are even more powerless than this metaphoric little girl they’ve stuffed you inside.

“You are as powerless,” he said, in a tone like he was intending the words to be kind, “as a sock puppet.”

The sun never set at the Transcendental Meditation camp. It was always afternoon here — sometimes cloudy, sometimes bright and sunny — but the sun always sat above the tree line on the far side of the lake. Heather lay curled on the dock with her eyes shut against it. Kolyokov sat beside her.

“We could do this forever, you know,” he said.

“Forever?”

“This place seems safe,” he said. “We have been here for ten hours by my accounting — and no one has come for me.”

“Would someone come for you?”

“The creature you call Babushka. I think. If she knew that I lived — yes.”

Heather opened her eyes. Squinted up at the zombie. His flesh was getting some of its colour back now, and the lake-water bloat was melting from him. White hair tufted up from his shoulder blades like wisps of lake mist. He squinted at the sun.

“Who’s Babushka, anyway?”

“Her name,” said Kolyokov, “is not important. It used to be Lena. But I don’t think she uses it any more. She’s past that — or she believes that she is which is the same thing here. But she’s very powerful. And she wants to become more so. That is why she seized the children. That is why she put you here.”

“Oh no,” said Heather. “Babushka didn’t put me here.”

“Really, now?” said Kolyokov. “Then who did put you here, if not her?”

That one was easy. “Holden Gibson,” she said. “The old fucking bastard.”

Kolyokov frowned. “Holden Gibson,” he said, then shook his head. “No. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Heather lay quietly for a moment. She thought about Babushka — and how according to old Kolyokov, she’d used to be called Lena. An idea came to her.

“He might have had a different name,” she said. “Before.”

Kolyokov looked at her with raised eyebrows. His face was almost living now.

“What was the name?” he said.

“Kaye,” said Heather. “The Koldun guy — he called him John Kaye.”

Colour flushed back into Fyodor Kolyokov’s face, and he leaped to his feet with uncharacteristic agility. “Kaye?” he said, hauling Heather up too. “Are you certain?”

Heather nodded — flinching back at the zombie’s sudden intensity. “Um — pretty certain,” she said.

Kolyokov said something in Russian, and started up the dock. “John Kaye,” he said. “After all these years. He should be dead — we thought he was dead. . . . But . . . It begins to make sense now. Yes . . .”

“Hey!” shouted Heather. “Where are you going?”

“You’d better join me,” he said. “We’ve got dark work ahead of us.”

“
Dark
work?” Heather rolled her eyes.

“Yes.” Kolyokov turned. He seemed to have grown a little bigger — and the sunlight, the way it reflected in his eyes, made it seem as though they burned inside with their own light. “We have to get out of this metaphor of ours once and for all.”

“Oh great,” said Heather. She started up the cliff. “Okay. I’ll kill myself first, and you follow.”

“No. It’s not ourselves who must die. Tonight,” he said, stomping up the hill, “we must murder this Hippie Pete of yours. That is the thing that will break this place’s hold on you.”

Murdering Hippie Pete. It was, of course, a brilliant idea. Something that Heather was a little disgusted with herself for not having considered before.

Kolyokov stopped. “You are not squeamish — are you my dear?”

“Squeamish?” Heather ran to catch up with the old zombie. “Fuck no! How’re we gonna do it? There’s no guns here, but I know where the power tools are! Can I help? Can I?”

Kolyokov laughed and patted Heather on the top of the head.

“You are,” he said, glancing back at the horizon as he spoke, “a delightful child. Truly. I wish I had ten thousand of you.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, and Heather could see flashes of what looked like lightning in the gathering clouds beyond the far treetops. That was fine with her. Whatever storm the sky could let loose on their heads would be nothing compared to the shitstorm of trouble she and her zombie pal Fyodor Kolyokov would let loose on Hippie Pete when they found him.

There were five guys in the Emissary’s lobby when Amar Shadak arrived. They wore track pants and jackets and expensive running shoes with squishy balloons in the heels that were supposed to make high-impact athletics easier on the ankles. The balloons were wasted on these guys. For one thing, there were at least twice as many chins as guys here. For another, when they talked, they made a wheezing fat man sound. And finally, two of them were smoking, in defiance of what Shadak understood to be a rigidly enforced anti-smoking law in the new mayor’s New York City.

But smoking and morbid obesity would have been the least of their concerns if a New York policeman were to stop them on the street. All of them, Shadak expected, were packing guns.

“Hey,” said one of them as Shadak set his bag down. “We’re closed for business, buddy. New fuckin’ management — you got it?”

“I am here to see my friend Gepetto,” said Shadak pleasantly. “I have an appointment.”

“Do you now?”

“I am Amar,” said Shadak. “I called ahead last night.”

“Amar,” said another one of the guys. “From Istanbul, right?”

“That’s right.” This one was taller than his friends, with greying hair. He looked Shadak in the eye. “They said a guy from Istanbul would be showing up here this morning. Guess you’re him.”

“That’s right.” Shadak smiled.

“You just fly in? Shoulda called from the airport. We woulda sent a car.”

“Under the circumstances,” said Shadak, “it was better I take a taxicab.”

The grey-haired guy nodded. He didn’t take his eyes off Shadak. “Sometimes that’s better,” he said.