Night Watch 05 - The New Watch (2 page)

A slightly scornful expression appeared on the young woman’s face. The man appeared perfectly capable and competent. But then how could he not know the most ordinary things . . . ‘The flight to Barcelona lasts three hours.’

‘Three hours and twenty minutes. But suppose—’

‘So where are you flying to?’ asked the young woman, rapidly losing interest in him.

‘Nowhere. I was seeing off a friend. Then I sat down to drink a mug of beer.’

The girl hesitated. ‘Tamara. My name’s Tamara.’

‘I’m Anton.’

‘You probably don’t have children, do you, Anton?’ asked Tamara, still unwilling to abandon her favourite subject.

‘Why do you think that? I have a daughter. Nadenka. The same age as that . . . tub of lard.’

‘So you didn’t want to let your wife remain a free, healthy woman?’ Tamara laughed. ‘What does she do?’

‘My wife?’

‘Well, not your daughter . . .’

‘By training, she’s a doctor. But in herself . . . she’s an enchantress.’

‘That’s just what I dislike so much about you men,’ Tamara declared, getting up, ‘that vulgar affectation. “An enchantress”! And no doubt you’re quite happy for her to slave away at the cooker, wash the nappies, get no sleep for nights on end . . .’

‘I am, although no one washes nappies any more – disposables have been in fashion for a long time.’

At that the young woman’s face contorted as if she had been offered a handful of cockroaches to eat. She grabbed her handbag and walked over to the check-in desk without even saying goodbye.

The man shrugged. He picked up his phone and raised it to his ear – and it rang immediately.

‘Gorodetsky . . . Completely? No, third-level won’t do at all. A full charter flight to Barcelona. You can accept it as second-level . . . Can’t you?’

He paused for a while, then said: ‘Then one seventh-level for me. No, that’s wrong. The boy has a First-or Second-Level gift of clairvoyance. The Dark Ones will dig their heels in . . . A single fifth-level intervention – a change in the fate of one human and one Other . . . All right, put it down to me.’

He stood up, leaving his unfinished mug of beer on the table, and set off towards the check-in desk, where the fat boy was standing in the queue beside his mother with a stony look on his face, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

The man walked straight past the checkpoint (for some reason no one even tried to stop him) and approached the woman. He cleared his throat politely. Caught her eye. Nodded.

‘Olga Yurievna . . . You forgot to turn off the iron when you were ironing Kesha’s shorts this morning . . .’

A look of panic appeared on the woman’s face.

‘You can fly on the evening charter,’ the man continued. ‘But right now you’d better go home.’

The woman tugged at her son’s hand and then went dashing towards the exit. But the boy, whom she suddenly seemed to have forgotten completely, gazed at the man wide-eyed.

‘You want to ask who I am and why your mum believed me?’ the man asked.

The boy’s eyes misted over as if he were looking inside himself, or at something far, far away on the outside – something in a place where well-brought-up children weren’t supposed to look (and where badly-brought-up adults shouldn’t look either, unless they really had to).

‘You are Anton Gorodetsky, Higher White Magician,’ said the boy. ‘You are Nadka’s father. Because of you . . . all of us . . .’

‘Well?’ the man asked keenly ‘Well, well?’

‘Kesha!’ the woman howled, suddenly remembering her son. The boy shuddered and the mist in his eyes dispersed. He said: ‘Only I don’t know what all that means . . . Thank you!’

‘Because of me . . . all of you . . .’ the man murmured pensively, watching as the woman and her child rushed along the glass wall of the terminal building towards the taxi rank. ‘Because of me . . . all of you will live lives of luxury . . . All of you are doomed. All of you have been bankrupted . . . All of you are, will, have been – what?’

He swung round and walked unhurriedly towards the exit. By the entrance to the ‘green corridor’ he stopped and looked back at the queue that had formed at the check-in desk for Barcelona. It was a large, noisy queue. People going away for a holiday at the seaside. There were lots of women and children in it, lots of men and even one child-free young woman.

‘God help you,’ said the man. ‘I can’t.’

Dima Pastukhov had just taken out his lighter to give his partner Bisat Iskenderov a light, even though Bisat had his own lighter – it was simply a routine they’d got into. If Dima took out a cigarette, Bisat reached for his lighter. When the Azerbaijani decided to smoke, Dima offered him a light. If Pastukhov had been inclined to intellectual reflection, he might have said this was their way of demonstrating their mutual respect for each other, despite their differences of opinion on many things – from problems of nationality to which car was classier: the Mercedes ML or the BMW X3.

But Dima wasn’t inclined to reflections of this kind – he and Bisat both drove Fords, preferred German beer to Russian vodka or Azerbaijani cognac and had quite friendly feelings for each other. So Dima clicked on the button, summoning up the little tongue of flame, glanced briefly at the exit from the airport terminal building – and dropped the lighter just as his friend’s cigarette was reaching for it.

There was a ‘dog’ walking out through the doors of the departure lounge. A middle-aged man who didn’t look frightening at all – quite cultured, in fact. Pastukhov was used to seeing people like this, but this one wasn’t simply a ‘dog’, he was
the
‘dog’ . . . from the Exhibition of Economic Achievements district, from way back in the distant past. Only he didn’t look drunk now, more as if he had a bit of a hangover.

Pastukhov turned away and started slowly groping for the lighter on the ground. The man with watchdog’s eyes walked past without taking the slightest notice of him.

‘A drop too much yesterday?’ Bisat asked sympathetically.

‘Who?’ muttered Pastukhov. ‘Ah . . . no, it’s just that the lighter’s slippery . . .’

‘Your hands are shaking and you’ve turned as white as a sheet,’ his partner remarked.

Pastukhov finally gave him a light, checked out of the corner of his eye that the man was walking away towards the car park, took out a cigarette and lit up himself – without waiting for Bisat’s lighter.

‘You’re acting kind of funny . . .’ said Bisat.

‘Yes, I was drinking yesterday,’ Pastukhov muttered. He looked at the terminal building again.

This time there was a ‘wolf’ coming out of it. With a self-confident, predatory gaze and determined stride. Pastukhov turned away.

‘You should eat
khash
the morning after,’ Bisat admonished him. ‘But only the right
khash
– ours. That Armenian
khash
is poison!’

‘Ah, come on, they’re absolutely identical,’ Pastukhov replied in his usual manner.

Bisat spat disdainfully and shook his head.

‘They may look the same. But in essence they’re completely different!’

‘They might be different in essence, but in reality they’re absolutely identical!’ Dima replied, watching the ‘wolf’, who had walked past and was also going towards the car park.

Bisat took offence and stopped talking.

Pastukhov finished off his cigarette in a few quick drags and looked at the door of the terminal again.

His first thought was angry, even resentful: Are they holding some kind of grand get-together in there today?’

And then the fear hit him.

The individual who had walked out of the doors when they slid open and was now standing there, gazing round thoughtfully, wasn’t a ‘dog’. But he wasn’t a ‘wolf’, either. He was someone else. A third kind.

A kind that ate wolves for breakfast and dogs for lunch. And left the tastiest parts for supper.

The classification that immediately occurred to Pastukhov was ‘tiger’. He said: ‘I’ve got stomach cramps . . . I’m off to the can.’

‘Go on, I’ll have a smoke,’ replied his partner, still offended.

To have asked Bisat to go to the toilet with him would have been strange. There wasn’t any time to explain anything or invent anything. Pastukhov turned round and walked away quickly, leaving Iskenderov in the path of the ‘tiger’. ‘He won’t do anything to him . . . He’ll just walk straight past, that’s all . . .’ Pastukhov reassured himself.

Pastukhov only looked round as he was already walking into the departure hall.

Just in time to see Bisat salute casually and stop the ‘tiger’. Of course, his partner couldn’t spot them – there wasn’t any incident in his past like the one Pastukhov had experienced. But this time even he had sensed something – with that policeman’s intuition that sometimes helped you pull an entirely unremarkable-looking man out of a crowd and discover that he had a rod stashed in a secret holster or a knife in his pocket.

Pastukhov suddenly realised that his stomach cramps were genuine now. And he sprinted into the airport’s safe, noisy interior, full of people and suitcases.

Since he was a good
polizei
, he felt very ashamed. But he felt even more afraid.

‘
GORODETSKY WILL REPORT
on the situation regarding this morning’s incident,’ said Gesar, without looking up from his papers.

I stood up. Caught Semyon’s glance of sympathy. Started talking.

‘Two hours ago I saw Mr Warnes off on the flight to New York. After our colleague had checked in and was buying vodka in the duty-free . . .’

‘You mean you went through passport control with him, Gorodetsky?’ Gesar enquired, again without raising his eyes.

‘Well, yes.’

‘What for?’

‘To make sure that he was all right . . .’ I cleared my throat. ‘Well, and to buy something for myself in the duty-free . . .’

‘What, exactly?’

‘A couple of bottles of whisky.’

‘What kind?’ Gesar looked up from the desk.

‘Scotch. Single malt. Glenlivet twelve-year-old and Glenmorangie eighteen-year-old . . . but that was for a present, I personally think drinking eighteen-year-old whisky is rather flashy . . .’

‘What the hell!’ barked Gesar. ‘Of all the petty selfish indulgences . . .’

‘Pardon me, Boris Ignatievich,’ I said, ‘but Mr Warnes drinks like a fish. And he prefers decent single malts, not White Horse. My bar’s completely empty. Tomorrow some other guest will arrive and you’ll assign me to look after him. But I can’t buy alcohol in the fancy “A-Z of Taste” supermarkets on my salary.’

‘Go on,’ Gesar said in an icy voice.

‘After that I sat down in the bar to drink a mug of beer.’

‘How long have you been drinking beer in the mornings, Gorodetsky?’

‘Four days now. Since Warnes arrived.’

Semyon giggled. Gesar half-rose to his feet and glanced round everyone sitting at the table – ten Others, all at least Third-Level or, as the veterans said, ‘third-rank’.

‘We’ll discuss the specifics of entertaining visitors later. So, you were drinking beer for your hangover. Then what happened?’

‘A woman came in with a child. A fat little boy about ten years old, bawling and howling. He was begging his mother not to get on the plane, said it was going to crash. Well . . . naturally, I scanned his aura. The kid turned out to be an uninitiated Other, High-Level, at least First or Second. From all the indications – a clairvoyant. Possibly even a Prophet.’

A light stir ran round the room.

‘Why such bold conclusions?’ asked Gesar.

‘The colour. The intensity. The glimmering . . .’ I strained slightly and broadcast what I had seen into space. Naturally, I didn’t create any real image, but the mind will always oblige and find some point in mid-air for a picture.

‘Possibly,’ Gesar said, with a nod. ‘But even so, a Prophet . . .’

‘As a rule, a clairvoyant doesn’t have the ability to foretell his own future. But the boy was frightened of his own death. That’s an argument in favour of a Prophet . . .’ Olga said in a quiet voice.

Gesar nodded reluctantly.

‘I enquired if we had the right to a first-or second-level intervention – to save the entire plane. Unfortunately, we didn’t have that right. Then I personally took the right to a fifth-level and removed the boy and his mother from the flight.’

‘Reasonable,’ said Gesar, apparently a bit calmer now. ‘Reasonable. Is the boy being monitored?’

I shrugged.

Semyon cleared his throat delicately. ‘We’re working on it, Boris Ignatievich.’

Gesar nodded and looked at me again: ‘Is there anything else?’

I hesitated. ‘He made another prediction. To me personally.’

‘To a Higher Other?’ Gesar asked, to make quite sure.

‘A Prophet!’ said Olga, sounding almost jolly. ‘Definitely a Prophet!’

‘Can you repeat it for us, Anton?’ Gesar asked in a voice that was perfectly calm and friendly now.

‘By all means. “You are Anton Gorodetsky, Higher White Magician. You are Nadka’s father. Because of you . . . all of us . . .”

‘What came after that?’

‘At that point he was interrupted.’

Gesar muttered something and started drumming his fingers on the table. I waited. Everybody else was waiting too.

‘Anton, I wouldn’t like to seem impolite . . . but are you certain it was your own decision to drink beer?’

I was flabbergasted. Not even offended, just flabbergasted. To ask an Other if he has fallen under someone else’s influence is quite a serious matter. It’s like . . . well, it’s like one man enquiring about the success of another man’s intimate life. Between close friends, of course, that kind of question is possible. But between a boss and his subordinate . . . and in the presence of other colleagues . . . naturally, if an inexperienced Other commits some kind of inept blunder, then the question ‘Were you thinking with your own head?’ is quite appropriate, although even so it’s rhetorical. But asking a Higher Other a question like that . . .

‘Boris Ignatievich,’ I said, furiously tearing away all my layers of mental defence. ‘I must have given you some reason to say that. I honestly can’t think exactly what. In my view, I acted entirely of my own free will. But if you have any doubts, scan me – I don’t object.’