Ascendancies (43 page)

“About time,” Khoklov said. He dry-swallowed a pair of white tablets from a gunmetal pillbox. “Next time be sure your worthless crew of Armenian ethnics is fully prepared for my arrival.”

Starlitz jammed a big tin funnel into the Ilyushin's starboard wing tank. Against the hangar wall were two long rows of oily jerry cans, full of aviation kerosene. Starlitz hoisted a can one-handed to his shoulder and began decanting fuel, humming to himself. It was a slow process. As the pills came on, impatience struck Khoklov. He lugged jerry cans two-handed to the port wing tank, waddling with the weight.

The first row of cans was emptied. Khoklov started on the second. He heaved at a can and stumbled backward. “This one is empty!” he said. He tried the next. “This one, too.”

The entire second row of cans had been drained. Khoklov kicked the final can across the hangar with a hollow bonging. “We've been robbed!”

“Looks that way,” Starlitz admitted.

“Your thieving Armenians!” Khoklov shouted. “They have embezzled the fuel! For a few lousy black-market rubles, they have stranded me here! My God, I'm finished!”

“Coulda been worse,” Starlitz offered. “They coulda filled the cans with water instead. Flying low and fast, you'da pranged for sure.” He thought it over. “Or bailed out over Iran. That woulda been hairy, ace.”

“But they've ruined me! Ruined the whole operation! How could they be such meatheads?”

“Beats me,” Starlitz said. “Times are tough here; fuel's in short supply…But be cool. We'll find you some go-juice somehow. The Boss must have some. The Boss may be mean, and ruthless, and greedy, and totally corrupt, but he's not
stupid
, y'know. He's probably got kerosene hoarded just in case.”

“He'd better!” Khoklov said.

“We'll go to the Estate and ask around,” Starlitz told him. “I'll give you a lift in the truck.”

Khoklov's panic faded. He tagged after Starlitz and climbed up into the cab of the ZIL. Starlitz steered the truck down the airstrip, mashing the runway flares into embers under the ZIL's giant wheels. He flicked on the ZIL's headlights and turned onto a dirt road.

“Such a big truck and such a nasty little cab,” Khoklov griped. He killed what was left of the vodka. Then he stared moodily out the windshield, at tall weeds ghost-pale by the roadside. “This situation's an outrage. The whole nation has lost its bearings, if you ask me. Especially in the provinces. It's getting very bad here, isn't it?”

“Yeah, this used to be good cropland,” Starlitz said.

“Never mind the mere physical landscape,” Khoklov scoffed. “I mean
politically
, comrade. Even lousy black marketeers openly defy Party authority.”

“The Party
is
the black marketeers, ace. It couldn't work any other way.”

The headquarters of the local agricultural complex had an official name, something with a long Cyrillic acronym. To those who knew about the place, it was just the Estate. It was the country seat of the Party chairman of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. The chairman had a proper name, too, but no one used it. He was generally known as “the Boss.”

Starlitz took the back entrance through the high, wire-topped walls. It was late, and he didn't want to wake the armed guards in their marble kiosks in the front. He thoughtfully parked the monster truck by the racehorse stables, where its booming diesel would not disturb the slumber of the staff.

Starlitz and Khoklov walked across a groomed lawn, slick with peacock droppings. Massive sprinklers, purloined from a farm project, clanked and hissed above the croquet grounds. Starlitz paused to tie his shoe under the giant concrete statue of Lenin. Khoklov chased some monster goldfish away in the fountain, and drank from his hands.

Starlitz yanked a bell-pull at one of the back doors. There was no response. Starlitz kicked the door heartily with his tattered Keds high-top sneaker. Lights came on inside, and a butler showed, in pants and undershirt.

This man was not officially a “butler,” but a production-team brigade leader for the collective farm. The distinction didn't mean much. The butler's name was Yan “Cross-Eyes” Rakotov. Rakotov, who was corpulent and scarred, favored the two of them with his eerie gaze. “Now what?” he said.

“Need some kerosene,” Starlitz said.

“How much?”

“Maybe five hundred liters?” Starlitz said.

Rakotov showed no surprise. “Would gasoline do?” he said. Khoklov shook his head. Rakotov thought about it. “How about pure alcohol? I think we have enough to fill an airplane. Ever since the Kremlin's sobriety campaign started, we've been bringing it in by the truckload.”

Rakotov's wife showed up, squint-eyed and clutching her houserobe. “You bastard drunks!” she hissed.
“Shabashniki!
Buying booze at this time of night! Go home and let good Communists sleep in peace!”

“Shut up, woman,” Rakotov said. “Look, this is pilot here.”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Rakotov, startled. “Sorry; Comrade Pilot! Would you like some nice tea? Did you bring any nylons?”

“Life is hard,” Rakotov muttered. “I know the Boss keeps kerosene, but I think it's stored in town. He's in town now, you know. Political problems.”

“Too bad,” Starlitz said.

“Yes, he left this morning. Took the limousine, the kitchen bus, the cooks, his personal staff, even the live baby lamb for his lunch. He said not to expect him back for at least a week.” Rakotov straightened. “So you two can regard me as the Boss here, for the time being.”

“My people expect
me
back by morning!” Khoklov shouted. “There's going to be big trouble when I fail to show at the Kabul air base!”

Rakotov's giddy eyes narrowed. “Really? Why's that?”

“A military plane is not like one of your rural buses, comrade! There's no excuse for a failure to show up! And if I return too late, they'll know I have landed somewhere, illegally! The whole business here will be exposed!”

“That would be a terrible tragedy for a great many people,” Rakotov said slowly. He cleared his throat. “Say…I just remembered something. We have an underground fuel cistern, in the east wing. Why don't you come with me, Comrade Pilot? We can inspect it.”

“Good idea!” Starlitz broke in. “There's some empty jerry cans in the truck. Me and the ace here will fetch 'em. We'll be right back.” He grabbed Khoklov's sleeve.

Khoklov came reluctantly across the darkened lawn. “Can't you wake up some local peasants, and have them do this haulage labor? They ought to do
something;
God knows they're not growing any food here.”

Starlitz lowered his voice. “Wise up, ace. The east wing is a dungeon, man, a big underground bunker.”

“But…” Khoklov hesitated. “You really think…? But I'm a Red Army officer!”

“So what? The Boss has already got a State Farm chief in there, a personnel director, a couple of busybody snoops from Internal Affairs…He bottles up anybody he likes, and there's no appeal, no recourse—the guy runs everything. He's a top Party Moslem, man, the closest thing to Genghis Khan.” Starlitz urged Khoklov up into the truck. “Think it over from their angle, ace. If you just vanish here, DRAAF will think you've been killed on duty. Hit by ack-ack, down somewhere in rough terrain. Nothing to tie you to the Boss, or Azerbaijan, or the black market.”

“They'd put me in a dungeon?”

“They can't let you run around loose here—you're AWOL, with no residence passport. And you're Russian, too—you could never pass for a local.”

“My God!” Khoklov put his head in his hands. “I'm done for!”

Starlitz threw the truck into gear. “How long have you
been
in the military, man? Show some initiative, for Christ's sake.”

“What are you doing?” Khoklov said.

“Winging it,” Starlitz said, driving off. “After all, there's a lotta possibilities.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “We got a truckload of very heavy capital back there.” He shifted his denim-clad butt on the busted springs of the truck seat. “And pretty soon you'll be officially dead, ace. That's kind of a neat thing to be, actually…”

“What's the point of this? What can we possibly accomplish, all by ourselves, out here?”

“Well, lemme think out loud,” Starlitz said cheerily, taking a corner with a squeal. “We do have half a load of fuel in your plane; that's something, at least…Kabul's definitely out of range, but you could make Turkey, easy. There's a big NATO base in Kars, just over the border from Tbilisi. Maybe you could land there. The West would love to have an Ilyushin-14. It'd be the biggest haul for 'em since Lieutenant Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan.”

“That's
treason!
Khoklov shouted.

“Yeah, it is,” Starlitz said indifferently. “And that's one tough border, too…Not like Iran, y'know. You might pull a Matthias Rust on the way out, if you're a real hot-dog terrain flyer. But there's no way you're gonna get your crate past NATO.”

“Don't insult me by questioning my professional abilities!” Khoklov said. “I could do it, easily enough! But I am a loyal Soviet officer, not a traitor to my Motherland like Viktor Ivanovich Belenko.”

“I hear old Viktor's living somewhere near Washington now,” Starlitz said. “Got big cars, blondes, whiskey…But if that's not for you, it's fine with me, ace…” Starlitz grinned toothily.

“The criminal life must be rotting your brain,” Khoklov said, crossing his arms. His chin sank slowly into the white silk of his ascot. “Besides, they wouldn't let me fly, would they? The Yankees would never let me fly their best aircraft. An F-16, say. A Lockheed SR-71.” His voice was reverent.

“You'd be rich, though,” Starlitz said. “You could buy, like…a Cessna, all for yourself.”

Khoklov laughed harshly. “A civilian subsonic. No, thank you.”

“I know how ya feel,” Starlitz admitted. “Well, ace, we gotta find you your fuel. We got a chance, at least, if we can find the Boss. I'm gonna roll this baby into town.”

The private police force at the border of the collective farm did not stop them. They were used to heavily loaded trucks leaving at odd hours. Starlitz slung the ZIL onto the neatly paved road. Through no accident, this was the best-maintained road in Azerbaijan. At this hour it was almost deserted. Starlitz ratcheted his manual accelerator up to top speed.

The road was lined for miles with elegant shade trees, a transplanted species unsuited to the local climate. The dead trees' peeling trunks zipped by in the headlights, their bare twigs ripped by the ZIL's backwash. Planting the trees had been an attractive idea, carried out with complete incompetence. The Boss wouldn't mind, however. Abject failure always made him redouble his efforts.

Khoklov looked jittery. He was having second thoughts. “Why are you doing this, Starlits?” he shouted over the blasting roar of the engine. “Why are you taking such trouble for my sake? I don't understand your motives.”

Starlitz felt for a cigarette, speeding along one-handed. “I'm the
ground crew
, man. I handle the planes. That's my
function.”

“But won't you get in trouble for these actions? You could have let Rakotov put me in the prison. Destroy all evidence, and so forth.”

Starlitz was disgusted. “That's no use. That won't make the plane
fly
, man.”

“Oh,” Khoklov said.

“The system must be maintained, ace.” Starlitz lit up with a flick of the Cricket, his eyes glazed with eerie ontological assurance. “It's…what there
is
. As long as it lasts.” He blew smoke.

“Right,” Khoklov said uneasily. He put on his Walkman headphones and searched in his jacket for a cassette. Soon the reedy buzz of The Doors percolated out past his translucent, close-cropped ears.

They drove into the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, the most miserable province of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. The town had never fully recovered from the Civil War of the twenties, or the purges of the thirties, or even the Great Patriotic War of the forties. Collapse had become the status quo.

Most of the townsfolk were Armenians, an ethnic group whom everyone else within thousands of kilometers delighted in oppressing. Thanks to Stalin, a big lump of lost Armenians had been caught here in the middle of Azerbaijan, like a Christian prune in a Moslem fruitcake. And here they were still, with their cruddy, flyspecked stores and beat-up, dusty churches, and cracked streets blocked off for “repair” for years at a time.

Starlitz drove his truck down an alley, through towering, overcrowded apartment blocks built of substandard concrete. Discarded protest signs crunched under the ZIL's monster tires. The plaza still stank of tear gas; empty canisters of it lay around like Schlitz cans after a beer bust. There were sticky patches of blood, and odd greenish lumps that were the manure of police horses.

A large and hideous government building, in Stalinesque fifties gingerbread, had been stoned by the mob. Shattered glass lay before its gaping windows, glinting in the headlights.

Starlitz drove on warily. The crowd had pulled a big ferroconcrete statue from its pedestal in the center of the plaza. After its sudden descent down to earth, the statue's stone head had broken into disenchanting rubble. Chunks of its face had been stolen, presumably as souvenirs.

“Wonder who that was?” Starlitz said. “That statue, I mean.”

“Some local ruffian, no doubt,” Khoklov said. He shook his head. “At heart, the People are still loyal to the Soviet ideals of the Party. It is only the provincial distortions of the economy that have provoked this ugly event.”

“Oh,” said Starlitz. “Good. For a minute I figured there was some kinda real trouble here.”