Rasputin's Bastards (5 page)

“It is like coming back from the dead,” he said with some relish — but the bald man didn’t appear to get the joke. He gave Alexei a funny look.

“My name’s James,” he said, on his way out. “Take a walk when you feel up to it.”

The soup gave him a kind of strength, but he still took a moment before reaching over to the stack of clothes and dressing himself. Really, this amnesia game would have to end sometime — if he was a true professional, he would never have attempted it in the first place. Just told the people here what had happened, radioed to the coast guard and told them about the possible homicide on the Romanians’ ship. He finished the soup, slurping back the noodles at the bottom of the cup and swallowing them whole, and set it down on the floor at his ankles. The game was childish, he knew. Pointless, too.

Sooner or later, he would have to stop remaking himself like this.

Alexei unfolded the clothes. The trousers were a mess — they were dress pants, and really should have been dry-cleaned. At least they hadn’t shrunk. The bald man’s sweater was really a bright red sweatshirt, and it had a big logo with the dark blue words SUBSCRIBE! underneath an arch of pale blue laminate. The whole thing looked to Alexei like a monochrome rainbow. When he put it on, he noted with distaste it was also a size too small for him. It stretched across his shoulders, the sleeves rode up his forearms, and the collar grabbed around his neck like a noose. He reached under the pillow and slipped the asp into his pants-pocket. He slipped his bare feet into his shoes and made his way outside.

Sooner or later, Alexei would have to tell someone — besides the woman Heather, who seemed altogether too willing to keep his secret for him — what had happened on the Romanians’ yacht. Mrs. Kontos-Wu might be dead. He might have failed, the drama might be over. But she might have simply been wounded, or still be alive on the boat, on her way to God knows where. If that were the case, his little game was his real failure.

Comfort is the torturer’s first tool
.

And sex is the second, and ill-fitting sweatshirts is the third, and a misguided appeal to duty is the fourth
, thought Alexei. Score one for Kolyokov.

The cabin opened onto a narrow corridor that was lit only dimly. It felt as though the boat’s motor was directly underneath this spot, because the corridor hummed and vibrated in a way that tickled up through Alexei’s shinbones — like the feather of unease that tickled up through his middle. That made him behave as though he were a prisoner. Or an infiltrator.

Alexei passed by a steep, narrow set of stairs, and he started to climb them. But he abruptly changed his mind. He wasn’t a prisoner here, and he wasn’t an infiltrator — at least not yet. He was still Gibson’s guest.

But Gibson . . .

Like Heather said, he was a prick.

And he did things to little kids.

When they’d fished Alexei out of the ocean, an instinct had told him to keep his mouth shut. Now, that same instinct kept him from climbing the stairs onto the main deck.

The corridor bent here, and Alexei continued along it. It seemed to bend back in a U shape, so that Alexei was looking at another row of cabins. At the end of it, a door stood ajar.

Alexei started down the hallway. It wasn’t until he made it to the edge of the door, and began to peer around it, that he realized he’d been rolling his feet so as to make no noise and had extended the asp so that it hid ready behind his thigh.
Training never leaves us
, he thought, as he looked into the empty closet. He was about to turn away, when that training nudged him back, and he noticed the faint light coming from cracks around the edge of the closet’s far wall.

Alexei went forward, and pushed open the hidden door.

“Shit,” he mouthed, looking into the room.

It was a cabin, maybe three times as big as the one they’d put Alexei in. But its portholes had been blacked out, and it was lined with white pine bunk beds and plain foam mattresses. At the far end, there was a little chemical toilet, and a watercooler just like the one outside Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s office in New York. It made a belching sound as an enormous air bubble shot to the top of the tank. Alexei looked at the bunk beds — he counted fifteen, and he wouldn’t have been able to stretch out comfortably on any one of them. They were far too short for a grown man.

But the size was perfect for little kids.

“Shit,” Alexei whispered.

This room was a smuggler’s hideaway.

For smuggling children.

Before anyone could show up to make trouble for him, Alexei returned the door to the slightly-ajar position he’d found it in, and made his way back to the stairs. When he got there, the asp was back in his pocket. From above, he could smell the salt and rot of the sea air. Still putting it all together in his head, he climbed. Feigning amnesia, Alexei thought, was the smartest thing he had done in recent memory.

“You speak Russian?”

Alexei stood on the yacht’s prow, watching Holden Gibson approach. He had been standing alone there for a few minutes, watching the waves break against the hull, occasionally looking back across the deck, or glancing out to the horizon, which was grey and featureless under the thick cloud. He was thinking about what to do next — find a radio, try and contact the coast guard, call in the Marines on this fucking child smuggler, and let them know about Mrs. Kontos-Wu at the same time — when he spotted Holden Gibson. Alexei waited for the big man to make his way across the mist-washed deck.

“Of course you speak Russian,” said Holden. He was wearing a raincoat like Heather had worn last night, and he stopped not a foot away from Alexei. “I think I understand where my instinct is taking me now,” he continued. “It could be either way — telling me I should just kill you and dump the body in the drink. Or that you might be useful. I think maybe I shouldn’t kill you. I think it’s telling me to offer you some work.”

“What kind of work?”

Holden threw up his hands and rolled his eyes. “Christ’s sake, boy — what is with all the questions? Look, just tell me — do you or don’t you want to work? Because we are going to be there soon and I want to hedge my bets, all right? Now are you remembering things any better?”

“No,” said Alexei.

“Good. Do you remember your Russian?”

“
Da
,” said Alexei.

“What the fuck’s that?”

“Russian for Yes.”

“Russian. Good.” Holden’s hands came together and he rubbed them, as though warming them in the spray. “Now here’s the job. I’m meeting some people — we’re meeting real soon — and I think some of them will be speaking Russian. That is the sense I get. But I don’t speak Russian, and they know I don’t speak Russian. Got that?”

“Yes,” said Alexei.

“Good. Now. These Russians, they don’t know about you, and they don’t know you speak Russian. So the thing I want you to do is listen — keep your mouth shut, but listen — and when they’re talking Russian, remember what they say and tell me that. Can you do that? Or does your fucking head hurt too bad? Because I don’t have to tell you — you’re dead weight on this boat right now.” He looked at Alexei. “You’re ballast. You know what ballast is?”

“Yes,” said Alexei. “I know what ballast is.”

“And?” Holden Gibson’s hands made fists, and he jammed them into the pockets of his raincoat. “And?”

“I can do this for you.”

“Good.” Holden grinned at Alexei, his teeth improbably white. They were the teeth of a healthy young man, stolen in the night and hammered into the gums of a sick old monster’s head. “Good. This is a good idea I’ve come up with, isn’t it?”

Alexei pushed his own hands into his pockets, and felt the asp in one of them. He gripped it, and smiled back. “You’re the boss,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Holden. “I am the boss. And you should get inside, you stupid fuck. I don’t want you fainting with pneumonia.” He squinted at Alexei’s sweatshirt. “Where did you get that?”

“Borrowed it,” he said. “From one of your people, I think.”

“Looks like a hand-me-down,” said Holden, and shook his head. “My kids haven’t worn one of those since, what? — ’91.”

“A significant year,” said Alexei.

“Yeah.” Holden’s eyes brightened at that, and he snapped his fingers. “Yeah! That’s when you guys threw out the commies — Yeltsin in the tank and knocking over Lenin and all that shit. You there for that?”

“I can’t remember,” said Alexei.

“Right — amnesia.” He said it quietly. “Of all the luck . . .” And at volume: “You’re going to do okay here, pal.”

Pal
. Outwardly, Alexei kept up his smile. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the children’s room below and the padlock on the outside of it. “I will go inside,” he said, and broke away from Holden.

Alexei went back inside, but he didn’t return to his cabin. First he wandered up to the bridge. There was only one crewmember on duty there, holding the wheel and staring at the horizon over the bow. The radio was within reach of the guy. If Alexei wanted it, he’d have to take him down. Alexei clutched the asp in his pocket. But the moment was lost. “You’re welcome to stay, just don’t touch anything,” said the crewman, before Alexei could even introduce himself. Alexei made a show of looking over the controls here, then wandered over to the big map table. A chart of a coastline had been pressed down under a sheet of heavy glass. Maybe it was Maine, but Alexei couldn’t say exactly where — the chart was navigational, and awash in numbers.

He asked where they were right now, and the crewman tapped the glass with his fingertip, over open sea: “Right about here.” Alexei didn’t see any scale to the map, but he noted with some interest that they were about an inch to the east of the dotted line that indicated the 200-mile limit.

When Alexei asked where they were headed, the crewman just shrugged. “Okay,” said Alexei, and didn’t ask again.

If he wanted to use the radio, and have any hope of surviving to wait, he’d have to pick another time.

So Alexei climbed down to the main deck, and made his way into the yacht’s lounge. On the Turk Shadak’s yacht, the equivalent room had been lined with cushioned benches and was decorated with a kind of faux-nautical kitsch that included a fishing net overtop the small bar and a half-scale lobster trap dangling from the ceiling.

Holden Gibson’s boat was considerably larger, and so it was with the lounge. But by comparison, this one was stripped down. A small part of the room had been sectioned off as an office area — Alexei saw a fax machine, as well as two laptop computers hooked up to a printer. The rest of the room was set up like a theatre — or, more appropriately, a lecture hall. Folding chairs had been arranged in rows along the length of it, facing a projection-screen TV next to a wooden podium. There were some long tables along the sides of the room, stacked with cardboard stationery boxes. Alexei went to a table, and opened a box. He picked up one of the pieces inside — printed on thick red paper stock.

He read:

SELLING IS YOUR LIFE!

And underneath, in slightly smaller type:

FIVE SURE-FIRE TIPS TO HELP YOU BEAT THAT QUOTA!

1-Tell the customer that you are RAISING FUNDS for CHILDREN! Think about it — that is JUST EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE DOING! RAISING FUNDS for CHILDREN! This is NOT A LIE!

2-Show the customer your CHARITABLE CARD! Remember, DO NOT say you are from a REGISTERED CHARITY! That is a lie! Just showing the CHARITABLE CARD is not a lie! And that alone will CLINCH more than ONE-HALF of your sales!

3-If the CUSTOMER says NO, ask her what YOU have DONE WRONG! If what she tells you makes you want to CRY, then GO AHEAD AND CRY! It will make the CUSTOMER feel SORRY — almost as SORRY as you will feel if you do not make QUOTA!

4-DO NOT let the CUSTOMER think about the sale and CALL YOU later! DO NOT ever give out our TELEPHONE NUMBER! If the CUSTOMER insists, TELL THE CUSTOMER that she can CANCEL her subscription within TEN DAYS if she changes her mind! That is NOT A LIE! Just DO NOT tell her that her MONEY WILL BE REFUNDED!

5-START filling out the SUBSCRIPTION FORM before the CUSTOMER has even agreed to PURCHASE a SUBSCRIPTION! She will SEE YOU WRITING and think she has ALREADY AGREED! Or she will FEEL SORRY FOR YOU — particularly if you tell her that you will be PUNISHED for any PART-WAY FINISHED SUBSCRIPTION FORMS IN YOUR BOOK AT THE END OF A SHIFT! This is NOT A LIE! You can CLINCH up to ONE-THIRD of your potential SALES this way!

6-(Okay, we lied! There are really 6 tips!) Smile! Because remember — NOBODY likes a SAD SELLER!

“A sad seller,” Alexei repeated under his breath. It was marginally better than what he’d suspected of Holden and his crew. More than marginally, actually. But Alexei reminded himself that it still didn’t preclude his worst suspicions being true.

He put the paper back down and looked over some of the other sheets. They all had similarly themed titles: SELL THAT MAGAZINE! And DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER! And WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T SELL THIS PRODUCT! Further down the row, the titles varied intriguingly: HELLO MR. POLICEMAN! And CHILD WELFARE WORKERS — ANYTHING BUT! And THE YOUNG OFFENDERS ACT: CANADA’S GIFT TO YOU!

“Canada?” Alexei muttered. What do these people have to do with Canada?

“We used to spend a lot of time in Canada.”

He looked up to see Heather, standing in the doorway leading astern. She was back in her raincoat, and a cigarette dangled between her fingers. She closed the door with her shoulder and sashayed across the lounge. Her brow crinkled in a little, remembering to frown. Her eyes took a faraway cast as she continued:

“Toronto, Mississauga, London — yeah, they’ve got a London up there. I remember we spent about a week in Ottawa — that’s the Canadian Washington — back in ’88. Kept the vans in a trailer park outside at night, and through the day, it was just like scooping money off the ground. Ottawa was
good
to us.”