Rasputin's Bastards (56 page)

They were almost equals at first. In the two weeks it took for Shadak’s and Saunders’ people to coordinate the shipment of munitions and guards for it at the border rendezvous, Amar and Alexei got to know one another very well. They spent time in clubs — partied with the Mujahedeen staffers at Captain Musa’s villa outside Quetta. After only a little hesitation, Amar introduced Alexei to his girlfriend. Her name was Ming Lei. She was twenty-one years old and Shadak had met her at a club in Hong Kong, where she had been working as a dancer. She had implied several times that she was trying to gather enough money to smuggle her family out of the People’s Republic and this was the best way of earning it quickly. He trusted her, the way only a twenty-two year old can trust a beautiful woman who doesn’t answer questions directly.

“I want to bring her with us,” said Shadak at their favourite club, while Ming was off for a pee.

“To Kandahar?” Alexei appeared to consider it. Amar had expected him to do the sensible thing and tell him to fuck off. But then Alexei surprised him.

“Why not? She is good luck, yes?”

Amar blinked. “She is good luck.”

“Can she handle a gun?”

Amar laughed and stubbed out his cigarette in the little bronze ashtray at their table. “She doesn’t know about guns,” he said.

“That’s good,” said Alexei. “It never pays to love a woman who knows about guns.”

And they’d laughed. And Ming had come back, straightening her short skirt, and looked at them both. “What you laughing about? Crazy bastard?” She punched Amar hard in the arm. “What?”

Alexei propped his own cigarette in the crook of his smiling lips, and extended a hand across the table to Ming. She took it. “Congratulations, darling,” he shouted over the club’s booming techno-pop soundtrack. “Amar and I have voted on it.”

“What?”

“We’ve decided,” shouted Alexei.

Amar slid his arm around Ming’s ass.

“You’re coming to Kandahar!” he hollered. “With us!”

Ming laughed and nodded, and rubbed her hip deliciously against Amar’s shoulder. She seemed pleased enough at the time. Although later, Amar would learn that was because she hadn’t understood a word either of them had said over the din of the nightclub.

“You crazy?” she demanded later that night as they lay in bed. “Take a Chinese woman to Afghanistan? With luck I would be raped by Russian soldiers. No luck, and we meet Mujahideen? Who knows what would happen?”

“If you don’t — want to go, you don’t have to,” Amar stammered.

“Who is that kid you working with, anyway? This his idea?”

“No. It was mine.”

Ming faced him, hands on both his shoulders. She pretended to study his face. “You look all hurt. Aw. Don’t look hurt. Stupid idea, that’s all.”

They hadn’t spoken about it the rest of the night. But the next morning, when they met Alexei, Ming just nodded when he went over their travel itinerary. When Alexei left them, Amar asked her about it.

“So you’ve changed your mind? Do you want to come?”

Ming grinned and nodded. “Sure,” she said, infiltrating his fingers with her own and squeezing hard. “Big desert trip. Sound like fun.”

And that was all she would say about it, until they were at the border and pulling the tarps off the Red Cross trucks that his Calcutta contacts had moved in for him.

“Well well,” said a voice from the back of the restaurant, “another tourist. I thought we were done with them, eh, Marie?”

Shadak looked up. The man who’d come in was skinny as a rail, with cropped hair and a face rouged with exploded capillaries. As he worked his way closer to the counter, Shadak could smell liquor coming off him. Liquor and bile. He went past Shadak and set himself down at the end of the counter. The waitress, Marie, poured coffee into a cup and saucer and brought it to him.

“Good morning, Bill,” she said.

“You have had a lot of tourists?” asked Shadak.

Bill shook his head and belched. “Oh, a few,” he said.

“Where did they go?”

Bill looked at him wearily. “Jeez-us,” he said. “Not so loud. They went away in boats.”

Shadak looked at him. He smiled pleasantly. “You,” he said mildly, “know more than that.”

Bill sipped his coffee noisily, like soup. “I don’t know anythin’ anymore,” he said.

Shadak stood up and took the stool next to Bill.

“Took my boat, what they did,” he said. “No gratitude, isn’t that right, Marie?”

Marie smiled and shook her head. “They paid you,” she said.

“Where,” said Shadak, “did they take your boat?”

“No idea.”

Shadak picked up his coffee and sipped at it. He smacked his lips and turned to the waitress.

“
What’s that I’m tasting
?” he asked in French.

“
Salt
,” she said.

“
You are joking
.”

“
It is a family secret. Takes away the bitterness
.”

Shadak might have asked another question — but there was a jangling at the front door. Jack Devisi stepped in. “Fuck,” he said, “there you are. We been lookin’ all over for you. Fuckin’ harbourmaster lost — ” Devisi stopped himself, seeing the two others in the diner “ — lost his train of thought,” he finished.

Shadak nodded. He looked at the drunk. Studied his bleary eyes.

The drunk blinked and stared at him, suddenly alert. His eyes had a hungry glitter to them.

“
You aren’t a grandchild
,” he said. In Russian. “
You are close. But you are missing
.”

“What the fuck,” gasped Devisi.

Shadak stepped back from the counter. Marie stepped back into the kitchen.

“Oh
merde
,” she said.

Shadak smiled. Russian. This wasn’t old Bill talking. This was — who?

“Babushka?” said Shadak.

Bill’s face broke into a grin.

“
Where
,” said Shadak carefully in Russian, “
is Alexei Kilodovich
?”

“
I was hoping
,” said Bill, “
you could tell me
.”

Then he faltered and grabbed the back of his chair. He settled himself into it.

“Wow,” Bill said, shaking his head.

“What the fuck?” said Devisi. “A Russian?”

Shadak looked around him. Devisi bent over the guy and slapped him. “Hey!” he said. “Fuckwit! What the fuck do you mean you could tell me? Where the fuck do we go! Answer me!”

Shadak was about to grab Devisi’s shoulder to make him stop when Marie appeared at the door to the kitchen.

“
We both want the same thing
,” she said in Russian.

“Ah, shit,” whispered Shadak. Then to Devisi: “Leave the old man alone. He has nothing to say to us.”

Bill was sobbing now. Marie, the waitress, touched her forehead and stumbled against the counter. She gasped. “I’m — sorry,” she said. “I didn’t say anything, did I?”

Rapture
. Shadak swore. It was the same as at the caravansary — the whole world might turn against him. The same as — as the caves.

Except this time, he was unarmed.

Shadak turned to Devisi. “Give me your gun,” he said.

Devisi’s eyes widened and he made shushing motions with his hands. “Fuck,” he whispered, “don’t talk — ”

He didn’t get a chance to finish. Bill was on top of him like a bouncer at a Belarus nightclub. “Fuck!” said Devisi, as Bill pushed him from the stool and onto the floor. Shadak slid back off his chair and tried to grab Bill, but the old man was quick, and rolled away. Shadak turned around and picked up a stool, as Bill fumbled in Devisi’s coat while Devisi hung onto the old man’s throat. Shadak held the stool over his head, when he heard the unmistakable
click!
of a firearm cocking.

“
Put down the stool
,” said Marie in Russian.

She was holding a double-barrelled shotgun levelled at Shadak’s chest.

Fuck
, he thought. He put down the stool, as Bill pulled Devisi’s gun from underneath his jacket.

Bill got up, coughed, and motioned for Devisi to do the same.

“In the back,” said Marie, motioning with the gun.

After listening to Leo Montassini talk about his travels, locating this place, Shadak had made his way to the 14th floor where old Fyodor Kolyokov had kept that tank of his. More than anywhere in the hotel, this place seemed haunted. It smelled like salt and rot, making Shadak wonder if that sea that Montassini described wasn’t just beyond the closed bathroom door. He felt, almost, as though he were walking into another world as he crossed that threshold.

You don’t mind if we wait outside, Bucci had said, and Shadak had said he didn’t. He stepped into the bathroom, flicked on the light, and beheld the “fucking UFO thing.”

It was a marvel, he supposed. But it was a marvel in the manner that seeing a mysterious thing you’ve only ever imagined is marvellous: it brings the fancy of imagination down to earth. Shadak had once imagined this sort of thing as a great gleaming pod — mirrored surface distorting the world around it like the eye of a huge fish; powered by crackling Van de Graaff generators and operated by monsters with strange appendages and wicked intent. Seeing this thing — a dark lozenge with rust streaks around the welds where pipes and hoses emerged; a simple steel-wrapped conduit providing it with power from a converted wall socket, Cyrillic notations stamped into its skin — made him wonder at its simple reality. Shadak had opened up the hatch — stuck his head inside and sniffed around for the ocean that Leo Montassini had fantasized. He’d chuckled. The tank smelled as much like an ocean as a toilet did, which was to say quite a bit — but Amar Shadak would never confuse the two.

Now, he, Devisi and their two captors marched through the door into the kitchen, and then down stairs to a rough-hewn cellar that had been cut into bedrock some time ago. It also, Shadak noted with a chill, contained four more tanks.

“What the fuck?” said Devisi.

Bill jabbed Devisi in the small of the back. “Open the hatch,” he commanded. Devisi did as he was told. “Inside,” said Bill. Devisi gave Shadak a horrified look — but looked back at the gun, and climbed in.

“D-don’ fuckin’ close — ”

But that was all he could say. Bill swung the hatch shut and twirled the handle.

“What are you doing?” demanded Shadak. “Don’t think I’m getting into that fucking thing.”

Marie shook her head. “
No
,” she said. “
There is no point. I could not reach you through there. You are broken
.”

“
Him, though
,” said Bill. “
He will open his soul to me. In a week, he will become one of us
.”

Shadak sneered. “In a tank? Those are not for sleepers. Those are dream-walkers’.”

“
These are not dream-walker tanks. It is an improvisation of mine. There are drugs and gas and media in there. He will break down in a matter of days. It is practically automated. Listen
.” Marie motioned to the tank with her shotgun. Shadak went over, and pressed his ear against it. Faintly, he could hear the sound of music — some Russian folk song — something about a girl called Natascha — overlaid with shouting and pounding.

“But not for me,” said Shadak.

“
No
,” she said. “
You do not know where Alexei Kilodovich truly is. You are a dangerous mistake. You must be —
”

She held the gun. Shadak stared at her. She did not fire.

“
Where is he!
” she shouted at him. “
Let me into the Villa to see!
”

Shadak looked at her levelly. “If I knew how to get into the Black Villa,” he said, a smile creeping into his voice, “don’t you think I would have gone there myself by now?”

“
I —
” said Marie, and Bill finished for her: “
I am tired of this. I have a battle to fight elsewhere.
”

And with that, Marie let the shotgun fall to her side — and Devisi’s nine millimetre fell to the cut-stone floor from Bill’s limp hands. The two looked at each other in confusion as Shadak let his breath out and prepared himself for beating the living crap out of both of them.

Gepetto Bucci was not happy when Devisi told him what had happened in the café. Shadak could hear him from outside. He swore and paced and hit things in the little marina office. Shadak couldn’t really blame him. Shadak felt his face flush with the stupidity of the act. They needed to make a clean exit from this place. Who knew how far it would be to New Pokrovskoye? Who knew?

Shadak sat against the cinderblock wall of the marina and rubbed his face in his hands. The knuckles of his right hand were bloody where they’d come into contact with Bill’s belt-buckle.

He should never, he knew, have engaged in this chase. When Fyodor Kolyokov had told him he could provide him with Alexei Kilodovich — Shadak should simply have left. Kilodovich was not good for him. The last time he had seen him . . .

The last time, he had been in a place like this. He ran his hand over the rough cement of the wall. Did it remind him of the caves? The concrete wall here was not of a piece with the fantastic natural chimneys that twisted and curved to admit dusty light from a distant sky, the layered sediment that measured height and years in the walls like rings on a tree. The poured cement pad here had nothing in common with the fine sand that flowed in solid rivers through the base of the caves.

And yet — the mind draws connections.

He could lose this thing — lose what little of himself that he had retained since Afghanistan. Kilodovich could see to that, if Shadak weren’t clever.

“Hey.”

Shadak looked up. Bucci stood, his hands jammed into his coat pocket, looking down at him.

“You cryin’ now, Amar?”

Shadak wiped his eye and looked at his fingertip. Sure enough: tears.

Bucci knelt down beside Shadak. “You know,” he said, “you once upon a time were a pretty formidable fuckin’ guy.”

“I am,” said Shadak, pushing himself to his feet, “still a pretty formidable fucking guy.”

“Well I hope so,” said Bucci. “I owe you a lot. And I’m pretty fuckin’ curious about all this shit. But fuck.”