Rasputin's Bastards (69 page)

It was barren. But as he listened, he could hear echoing from the rocks and the water the hum of a motor. It did not sound like the sort of motor Imperial New Pokrovskoye employed in its navy.

Miles tapped another man he didn’t know well on the shoulder and pointed. That one shrugged him off, so Miles moved along — first one, then another, each ignoring Miles as the motor grew louder. Finally he stopped and looked again — for the craft had rounded the rock and he could see it for what it was: a fast-moving little cabin cruiser. At least, someone had built it to look like a cabin cruiser. It was maybe thirty-five feet — but judging from the speed it moved at, it came with a powerful engine. And that wasn’t the only modification. On its fore deck, where normally one might find a dinghy, there was something else.

It was a deck-mounted machinegun. It looked to Miles like an M2HB. Fifty calibre. A brown tarpaulin flapped around its base in the wind. Miles snatched a pair of binoculars from a mate standing near him. The man swore, but Miles didn’t care. He focussed them on the boat.

“Oh shit,” he said to no one — because no one was listening.

The gun was manned.

And it was swivelling in their direction.

“Kill them all.”

“Amar,” said Gepetto Bucci, “I’m not sure you want to get into this here.”

Amar Shadak stood on the bridge. Bucci was beside him. Two of Bucci’s guys from St. John’s were working the gun. And for now, Bucci was handling the wheel.

“If we don’t,” said Shadak, “then they’ll turn on us. Look at them.”

“Fuck.” Bucci squinted. “They’re fuckin’ fishing. We should fuckin’ cover up the gun. I got half a mind to turn this boat around on you, Amar.”

“You are already in,” said Shadak, “for kidnapping. For torture. Arms smuggling. Racketee — ”

“I’m in for a lot of shit,” agreed Bucci. “But my question is: how much more? This shit is all very interesting — weird fuckin’ hotels and ghost towns and shit. But at the end of the day, Amar, you and me are businessmen.”

“You owe me,” said Shadak.

“We are past even on this thing.”

“I will kill your family,” said Shadak.

“Promises promises.” Bucci sighed. “Gimme the binoculars.”

He held them up to his eyes and scanned across the flotilla of boats. Shadak counted eighteen of them. He knew from talking with the prisoners down below that there would be more than that on their way. The prisoners hadn’t been much help at first. In addition to Bill and Marie, there were eight others. When they left Cloridorme the previous day, at first it seemed as though they hadn’t a clue. But as they rounded the coast of Labrador, and drew nearer to New Pokrovskoye, they became more cogent — uttering their little threats. By the afternoon, Shadak had executed two of them, when it became clear that they were possessed by Babushka.
Amar Shadak
, one would say,
you have no hope. The world will soon be mine and you will be trapped forever in your metaphor and there will be shit you can do.
And Shadak would put his fingers over the sleeper’s mouth and pinch the nose, and give Babushka a taste of death. After that, he’d have the sleepers to himself — locked in with their delusions and their understanding based on those delusions as to what lay ahead.

The fleet was something that they kept bringing up.

This, Shadak understood, was the fleet.

Bucci whistled. “Okay,” he said, “I’m convinced.”

“Did you see — ”

“ — guns,” said Bucci. “Nothin’ bigger than an assault rifle. But those fucks aren’t fishing. They’re looking for something.”

Bucci stepped around the wheel, tapped on the glass. The gun crew looked up at him, and Bucci gave the thumbs-up.

Reflexes are a funny thing. Genetics have a lot to do with them, as does early conditioning. But far more important is experience: reinforcement by recent encounters. Miles Shute drew on that experience as the machinegun opened fire on the fleet. He dove for the deck shouting — ”Attack! To starboard!” and winced at the sound of limp bodies falling to the deck. There was a cry of pain that first he thought he heard, then knew that he felt. And for a moment, he could sense the agony of Babushka as she lost parts of herself. Then, confusion. It was all Miles could do to avoid running to the edge of the vessel and pitching himself into the ocean.

And for an instant, the barest of instants, Miles Shute was himself: the security chief of the Emissary Hotel, stuck on the deck of a boat while bullets tore at the gunwales and men and women screamed and gurgled away their lifeblood.

And for a moment again he thought:

What the fuck am I doing here on this boat? Who am I fighting for?

Even as another voice that seemed to echo off the back of his skull wailed:

Hurts!

It brought back a memory: of two, three years back, when Miles had found himself in a quarry up in Maine — finishing some work for Kolyokov. He hadn’t completely been himself, of course — his Master was with him, in the back of his head.

Miles was taking care of a situation: a private investigator who seemed to have a bit too much resistance to the Master’s ministrations — who kept asking questions — who in short wasn’t going to go away, until he found out what his client’s husband had been doing with a tenth of his income all these years. Miles had taken him out here to shoot him and be done with it. Fyodor Kolyokov had been along to make sure. But when they got out of the car and Miles was getting the crowbar, the detective had pulled his ace: a piece of piano wire taped on the inside of his belt. He contorted around the handcuffs so his hands were in front, pulled the piano wire out, wrapped it around Miles’ neck, and damn near killed him.

Fyodor Kolyokov had bolted. He screamed in shock and unexpected pain — and for a moment, Miles was all alone with his executioner. Miles struggled and squirmed, but the detective had the upper hand. Miles blacked out.

But here was the thing. He didn’t die. He came to in what must have been a very short time; standing over the detective’s body, wiping his hands on an old rag. Fyodor Kolyokov lurked at the back of his mind, returned and rejuvenated, already giving orders for the cleaners to come and dispose of the evidence.

Miles crawled across the deck to the starboard gunwale and propped himself up. He raised his own gun — an MP5 that he’d brought with him in his duffel bag — and waited for Babushka.

He waited longer than he’d have liked, alone in his skull. It was long enough to wonder at how just days ago, he’d come to this place hoping for kinship and liberation — with poor old Richard, who’d been so grateful for his freedom that he couldn’t stop weeping. When he’d come here, there had been no Empire of New Pokrovskoye — no Babushka. It had been a community — it had been something to live for. It had —

Better
, said a voice in the back of his mind. And Miles stopped thinking of those things. Something squeezed the trigger for him as he emptied his clip along the alien coastline.

Bucci ordered his guys to take a wide berth around the fleet of fishing boats, to keep out of range of their smaller arms — but it was easier said than done. The boats were spreading out now, creating a great net across the water, a line they’d have to cross.

“We won’t get around ’em,” he said to Shadak, who was bent low behind the wheel. “We’re goin’ to take some bullets.”

On the foredeck, the gun went silent for a second as Devisi reloaded. A bullet careered off aluminum nearby. Shadak swore under his breath.

“We have to get around them,” he said. “But we won’t take bullets.”

Bucci looked at him. “What?”

“Keep your distance and keep them covered,” said Shadak. “I am going below.”

Keeping down, he ducked into the hatch and the converted cabin below. This was no luxury yacht, so things were tight. There were two men with guns there, guarding the half-dozen hostages that they’d brought with them. Along one wall crouched the old man Bill and Marie, along with the California girl (who was named Andrea). Along the other wall sat the older Californian (Martin Lancaster, according to his driver’s license) and the surfer (who was actually a cop with the Los Angeles Police Department, name of Michael Baker), along with the quartermaster of Cloridorme. They were each handcuffed to steel hoops that had been welded into the bulkhead for precisely this purpose.

“Good afternoon,” said Shadak. The prisoners looked at him fearfully. He rolled his shoulders and took a breath and smiled his good host smile. “I hope that you are fucking comfortable you pieces of shit,” he said in carefully modulated tones.

The quartermaster glared at him through swollen eyelids. “Fuck yourself,” he said. “Babushka will come for you soon.”

Shadak smiled. “Is that so? Well,” he said, “I look forward to meeting Babushka. Is she here among you?”

The prisoners were silent. If Shadak didn’t know better, he would say none of them had the faintest clue what he was talking about. Above them, the M2HB began to chatter again.

“Come now,” he said. “It is obvious that Babushka has been here for some time.” A bullet made a star in one of the cabin’s little portholes. Shadak gestured to it. “She is certainly in the region.”

“You,” said Andrea.

“Me?” said Shadak. “No. I am my own creature today I think. But I will assume that Babushka is in one of you. So here is my bargain. Let me pass, and I will not execute each of you to see where she may rest.”

He didn’t know if Babushka was in any of them — but he could tell that his threat had had the desired effect. They all regarded him nervously.

“Are,” said the cop.

Another bullet whanged off the bulkhead. They were getting closer. Shadak spared a glance out the shattered porthole. The boats were much closer than they should have been — they appeared to be trying to close — suicidally. Shadak wondered if the Babushka might not be trying to call his bluff. There was another sound on the hull — not the sound of a bullet striking precisely, but a hollow impact. It sounded like a pok.

“In,” said Martin Lancaster.

“In?” Shadak felt his smile leak away. And for an instant, he felt himself back in the Black Villa — his true self, crouching as a tall, black-robed thing came towards him. Something lashed out of its middle.

“The way,” said the quartermaster.

“Oh fuck you,” said Shadak, “take me to Alexei Kilodovich. Or I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Easy,” said Martin Lancaster, “enough,” said the cop, “to arrange,” said Andrea.

And with that, the boat pitched to one side, and Shadak tumbled. He glanced up just in time to see a thing that looked like a pinkish-grey length of intestine flash by the porthole, as a sharp stink of ammonia reached his nostrils.

And then Shadak was gone from there — back on a cold stone plaza — in the place where his true self had been locked and imprisoned for two decades. Ominous clouds scudded across the sky overhead. Things moved in the shadow of the Villa’s overhang. Black branches from a dead fig tree rustled in the wind. And in the middle, by the well, the black devil Kilodovich stood over him — a thick length of tentacle whipping from its midsection.

Miles Shute had moved to the top of the wheelhouse of the fishing boat
Aleksandr Shabalin
to get a better shot. He couldn’t be sure, however, that instinct didn’t have something to do with it as well. Because consciously, Miles had no idea what was going on until the attack had nearly played itself out.

At first there were fifteen men who’d spread across the deck of
The Aleksandr Shabalin
. It took five of them to run the boat, and the other ten were eyes and firepower — nine of whom had been spending the day staring down into the water before the little cruiser had opened fire on them.

Three of those went down under fire — which was not surprising but still distressing. Miles hadn’t been here long, but he felt as though he’d made a bond with almost everyone he’d met — they’d all been violated by psychic puppet masters, after all. Even if he couldn’t place their names, watching three of them go down was queasy-making.

The other twelve were worse.

The first one disappeared while Miles was making his way to the iron rungs of the ladder that had been pounded into the front of the wheelhouse. There was some shouting, but he didn’t pay it much heed until he got to the top, and noticed two others turned away from the gunboat, scratching their heads and peering into the churning water off the portside. Miles yelled at them to pay attention then turned back to the launch, aimed the MP5, and let off a short and ineffectual burst. Two 50-calibre-sized furrows in the wood in front of Miles splintered open.

By the time Miles had summoned the nerve to put his head back up, another three were gone. He saw one of them in the water to starboard, splashing and screaming for help before a slick thing wrapped up around his throat and pulled him under.

Miles sniffed. The fishing boat smelled of diesel fuel and fish gut — but the air was suddenly sharp, with the stink of ammonia. He frowned, and squinted across the water at the cabin cruiser. The machinegun had stopped, and as he noticed, the boat itself was listing in the water, toward the rocky coast. Its motor whined. Miles held up the binoculars. He could see the water frothing at the seaward side. The only two men he could see were manning the gun. They were turning it away from the fleet now, and toward the frothing water.

Something whipped out of the water then, and lashed across the chest of one of the men.

“Shit,” said Miles. He lowered the binoculars, caught in that moment of wonder between perception and understanding. He was near to convincing himself that he in fact hadn’t seen what he’d just seen, when he looked down to the side of the boat, and watched as a torso-thick tentacle flopped onto the deck and whirled itself around old Orlovsky’s ankles. Miles followed the tentacle over the edge of the gunwale — and in the dimness of the twilight, saw the thing it was attached to. The thing had a torpedo-shaped body that gleamed in the dim light where it broke the water. A single, giant eye gleamed up at him with terrible, alien intelligence.