Rasputin's Bastards (53 page)

— looking across a black ocean.

Montassini shook his head.

“Four guys altogether,” he said, thinking as he looked. “Could be worse.”

Gibson stood still and listened. It didn’t take long before he heard the noise again — the rustling of leaves as someone stepped through. There was a subtle shift in the shadows.

“John,” said a voice.

Holden glared into the dark. But he was relaxed now. Back on top.

“Stop calling me that,” he said.

A figure stepped out in front of him from behind a row of tomato plants. He wore a long coat. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His beard was white. His name was Koldun, and he was as close to a host as Gibson had been able to find in this town.

The Koldun shrugged. “John’s your name,” he said. “John Kaye. It upsets you to hear it.”

“Call me Holden,” said Gibson.

“Of course. Bad memories for John Kaye, hmm?”

“If you say so.”

“Makes it difficult to sleep.”

“I got to piss.”

“No you don’t.”

It was true. Gibson didn’t have to piss. He was panicked and dislocated was all. Like a kid with a bad dream. He glared at the Koldun. He wasn’t going to say that out loud.

The Koldun looked at him across the darkness. “I’ve done my best to help you,” he said. “Twice now you’ve messed it up.”

Gibson looked away. The Koldun didn’t have to say messed up what because now Gibson’s short-term memory was working fine and he knew exactly what he’d messed up.

Earlier in the day, the Koldun had told him where Alexei, the traitor Russian, was resting. Told him Alexei had been doing nothing but trying to figure out a way to murder Holden Gibson and fuck Heather. Gibson hadn’t been able to get to Alexei for days while he was lying out cold in the bathhouse — he was under some kind of protection as long as he was there. But when he came to?

“Fair game,” the Koldun had told him then.

“He was fair game,” said the Koldun now. “You didn’t manage it though.”

Gibson glared at him.

The Koldun shrugged. “I’m not giving you shit, John. It was my mistake in attempting it. Leaving it to you. You’re a mess. You can’t even remember your own name.”

“Holden Gibson.” Gibson blinked. “Holden fuckin’ Gibson. So here we are. I fucked up. Couldn’t kill him. But that Russian — he’s more than he seems, isn’t he?”

“That’s why I needed him dead.”

Gibson narrowed his eyes.

“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“Because — ” the Koldun licked his lips. “Because I would have been observed.”

“And I wouldn’t?”

The Koldun didn’t answer and he didn’t have to as far as Gibson was concerned.

“You were fuckin’ setting me up, weren’t you?”

“You know that’s wrong,” said the Koldun.

“I don’t know anything.”

The Koldun shrugged. “That’s not true. You know who you are, John.”

Gibson massaged his knuckles. “I could fuckin’ kill you right now. Set me up. Fucker.”

The Koldun went on. “You know your name is John Kaye. And being as that is your name — you should have known better than to listen to her.”

“Her?”

“When she contacted you. With the children.”

“What do you mean?” Gibson bristled. “You talking about the phone call? These kids? I’d have been fucked if I hadn’t agreed to it. It was the best fuckin’ deal to come along the pipe in a year.”
These children — they’re talented. They’ll make you rich for as long as you’re alive. Come get them
. “More than a year. A fuckin’ lifetime.”

“Yes. It seemed that way for all of us. But we fell into her trap. As we have all in the past.”

“What the fuck do you mean?”

The Koldun threw his hands in the air theatrically. “Oh. I forgot. I am not talking to John Kaye. I am talking to Holden Gibson. You have no idea what happened to you that night.”

“Fuck you,” said Gibson. He turned to walk off.
Brought here by Babushka. Fuck off
. He was here because of a deal that he’d made with a woman on a telephone to bring some very talented young people — that was how she called them — very talented young people — into the fold. The woman was tough — she made a lot of fun of Walt Disney for some reason — and that pissed Gibson off for some reason —

For fuck’s sake, it was supposed to be frightening: the Devil; shrieking winged demons, the souls of the dead, lakes of pitch — that big mothering Satan in the middle.

Really
, she’d said. Fantasia?
Why don’t you just have the mouse send broomsticks after us? That is every bit as terrifying as this scribble of a demon you’ve made of yourself
.

Was that all it took to bring down John Kaye? Just a little doubt? Mockery?

“Bitch,” said Holden Gibson.

“Shh,” said the Koldun. “You don’t want her to hear.”

Gibson turned around. Now he was feeling tears in his eyes. “Bitch,” he said again.

The Koldun shook his head sadly. “She had very little to do with why you are the way you are, you know. That responsibility fell to others — afterwards. But without her? John Kaye would still be the man that he was, I think.”

“Ball-busting bitch,” said Gibson.

The Koldun frowned and looked to a spot behind Gibson.

“Shit,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”

“Who the fuck would be coming?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The Koldun, Vasili Borovich, reached into his coat. He produced a machine pistol and handed it to Gibson. Then pulled another one out and kept it for himself.

“What the fuck?”

“The children,” he said, his voice flat. “We have to take them — before it becomes any worse.”

Fyodor Kolyokov spread two blinds apart with his thumb and peered out the window. Light flickered across his eyes. Heather squirmed in her chair.

“Is it time or what?” she said.

Kolyokov appeared to weigh the question, rocking his head to the left — to the right.

“Well?”

“Ha,” he said. “She is dissipating.”

“Is that good?”

Kolyokov looked at her. “Not good, not bad,” he said. “Just — ”

“Just? Just what?”

“Just next. The next thing.”

Alexei and Montassini decided to leave Makar and Oleg for last. Montassini didn’t care how tough Makar and Oleg were supposed to be; he figured it was better to deal with gunmen first. And so he did — creeping around the side of the building, keeping low. When he saw the two patrolling guards to the west, he motioned to Alexei to follow him — moved forward, keeping down, stopping when one of them seemed to pause. They got inside twenty feet before Montassini did it — just muttered “fuck it” and ran — motioned Alexei to do the same. One of the guards saw him and brought up the rifle, but it was too late for gunplay. Montassini grabbed the gun barrel and twisted, jamming the rifle butt into the guy’s gut. Alexei cuffed the gun out of the other guard’s hand before it could even fire, then stepped around him and pushed, sending him to the ground. Montassini spun the rifle barrel around, smacked it across his guy’s temple. Alexei stomped down on his guy’s forearm, then bent and grabbed something out of his hand. Montassini’s guy crumpled. There was a click, and a whizzing sound, and Alexei’s guy stopped moving. Montassini stood and looked more closely at Alexei. He was holding a little metal rod, with a ball on the end of it. The ball looked like it was vibrating. Montassini stared at it, snapped his fingers, and then it came to him.

“Fuck,” he said. “You got an Asp. That’s cool shit. Loco keeps one of those in his organizer right next to his laser pointer. Why didn’t you say?”

“This guy had it,” said Alexei. He held it like a strange treasure, arm’s length, looked at it with wonder. “It used to belong to Alexei.”

“How’d he get it?”

“From Borovich.”

“Boro — ”

“The Koldun. He robbed Alexei,” said Alexei. “Just as they robbed us all.”

“Let’s go take care of the other two,” said Leo, hefting one of the rifles. He caught a look from Alexei.

“No shooting,” said Alexei.

Montassini rolled his shoulders and hefted the rifle. “Just in case.”

“You are a clever fighter,” said Alexei. “Don’t shoot anybody.”

They rounded the corner. Makar the giant fisherman and Oleg his vicious little brother were standing there, unarmed and unmoving. Montassini raised the rifle then lowered it as Alexei took off in a charge. Montassini hesitated for a moment — in admiration, watching as the Russian spy seemed to fly through the air, in the same motion clicking his Asp open and bringing it across Makar’s skull in a stroke that was almost painterly. Alexei continued past, as Oleg spun away from him and rolled onto the ground.

Montassini was tempted to just shoot Oleg right there but he held himself back. He charged at Oleg — who was far from the psycho that Alexei described. He seemed to be in retreat. He pulled down the handle of the front door and had started to step inside when Montassini caught up with him. He brought the butt of the rifle down on Oleg’s forearm, then pulled down on the barrel in a manoeuvre that was supposed to see-saw the butt up into Oleg’s chin.

It didn’t work out that way. Oleg swung back and turned to deliver a knee to Montassini’s unprotected groin. He had been groined three times in his life: once as a kid in some back-alley schoolyard shit; once by his ex-wife’s sister when he probably had it coming; and once in a deal with a guy who’d led everyone to believe was an uncle with the NYC Fuk Ching, but in fact was just a faggoty street fighter from San Francisco with a video collection and a death wish.

It never got easier.

Montassini fell back. It felt like his lungs were in seizure. He was able to hold onto the rifle at least. But Oleg had hold of it too, a ways up the barrel. The murderous little Russian fisherman rolled to the ground with Montassini.

Fuck, but it hurt down there. Montassini did his best to put it out of his mind — but it was tough. It was all he could do to dodge out of the way as Oleg jabbed two rigid fingers towards his eyes and suck air back into his spasming chest.

Montassini did his best. He twisted the rifle butt so it wedged in the general vicinity of Oleg’s solar plexus, but it wasn’t close enough. He shifted to one side, then the other, and then tried to use the momentum to flip Oleg over, but Oleg was doing his own shifting and rolling and it was no good. He finally grabbed Oleg’s ear and twisted it, but Oleg didn’t seem to mind that as much as another guy might and Montassini was just left twisting the guy’s earlobe while Oleg looked at him all “you getting off on this buddy?” and then grabbed Montassini by the hair and hit his head against the ground which hurt like a sonofabitch. Montassini’s vision got blurry before he could try anything else.

“You want to take the children.” Holden Gibson looked at his hands — back up at the Koldun. “You want to
kill
the fuckin’ children.”

“I don’t want to,” said Borovich. “No. No one but a monster wants to kill children. But these ones — ”

They were standing outside a large metal door at the back of the greenhouse, behind Holden Gibson’s little bedroom. Vasili Borovich the Koldun was working a latch on the door. Holden Gibson was clutching his nuts with one hand and the knife the Koldun had given him with the other and trying to put it all together.

“What the fuck about these ones?” said Gibson. “They’re not anything but little kids — little kids with the power, yeah. But what the fuck do they have to do with this fuckin’ Lena?”

The Koldun sighed. He stepped back from the door. “These kids,” he said, “are different than you and I. They are more than just dream-walkers. When Babushka gets into their heads — she can use their abilities to extend her reach beyond just the sleepers here that we have made. And that little one — ” he pointed at a baby “ — he is a key to them all. Because he — his
mind
— is made up from
all of them
.”

Holden Gibson was still putting it together. He thought about that. He thought about his time — John Kaye’s time — his time back in that City 512 place. Something clicked as he did.

“Those kids,” said Gibson. “That little one. They’re my fuckin’ grandchildren, aren’t they?”

The Koldun looked at him appraisingly. “You’ve been thinking,” he said.

“My
grandchildren
.” Gibson shook his head. “It’s just starting to make sense now.”

“Not necessarily,” said the Koldun. “But maybe. What do you remember?”

Gibson ran a hand across the stubble of his chin. “I remember — the sex was good.”

Gibson remembered a lot of other things. He remembered the rooms he lived in — a comfortable bed, a sofa, and a hi-fi unit in the corner of a room panelled in wood like a basement recreation room. Although the room had no doors that he could see, he had plenty of visitors: young women, for the most part. Almost all of them spoke Russian — although there were other languages there too. Only three or four ever spoke English to him. They’d bring him meals and spend the night and he would fuck them and they would disappear when he woke, never to return. He didn’t miss any one of them — they all seemed to be about as drugged up as him.

“So are they my grandchildren?”

The Koldun shrugged. “Hard to say,” he said. “I was not there for most of your stay. I know there were many that . . . contributed.”

“You want me to kill my grandchildren?”

The Koldun sighed and looked at him sadly. “
Da
,” he said. “I would have my sleepers do so . . . But they are vulnerable. You must do it.”

“Then why — ” Gibson glared at him. “Why the fuck did you tell me this?”

“I did not,” said the Koldun, “tell you anything. You came to this place yourself, Holden.”

Gibson half-smiled. “You’re callin’ me Holden all of a sudden.”

“That is what you prefer to be called, is it not?”

Gibson didn’t answer that. The Koldun shrugged, and turned back to the door.

“I have to kill my grandchildren?” said Gibson. It was a question and a statement all at once.