Rasputin's Bastards (11 page)

They were hosting a dinner party in Wisconsin when the call came. Stephen didn’t have any idea who it was at the time — although later, with Kolyokov’s help, he would learn that it was from a New York-based embassy official named Gregor Ivchyn. When Stephen caught up with him much later, the old ex-Commie had stutteringly explained he was doing the KGB equivalent of cleaning up his office on the way out.

Like shredding documents, da
?

At the time, all Stephen had known was that a shadow had drawn across his mother’s eyes as she handed the phone to his father, and when he took it he nodded and that same look fell upon him.
What is it
? said Mrs. Stewart from the dining room.
Is everything all right
? Dad strode across the room like a marching soldier and strangled her before she could say anything else. Mr. Stewart tried to stop him, but Mom brained him with the cast iron frying pan and he collapsed into the mashed potatoes. Their son, Ted — an athletic 13-year-old whom Stephen had developed something of a thing for — was upstairs in the bathroom at the time. The fact that he wasn’t in the room — and that Stephen had such an overpowering thing for him — was probably what saved Stephen’s life. Before his Dad had even released Mrs. Stewart’s neck, and his Mom had recovered her balance from the second fry-pan swing, Stephen was on the staircase. He burst into the bathroom, found Ted was just buckling his trousers, and somehow managed to convince him to follow him to the back bedroom where there was a window that opened and a small porch roof. Ted was halfway out the window when Stephen’s Mom appeared in the door, framed against the hall light. She held the pan like the weapon it had become.

But she dropped it as she saw Ted making his escape, and lunged across the room. Stephen’s Mom grabbed his foot with both hands and yanked hard. Stephen can still remember the cry that Ted let loose — a surprisingly girlish sob as his middle hit against the windowsill. Stephen’s Mom braced her foot against the wall beneath the window and prepared to yank again. But Stephen didn’t let her. He jumped on her back, pulling at the long, greying hair around her temples like reins on a horse, and digging his knees hard into her side. She shrieked and let go of Ted, who scrambled outside.

Mom! Stop it
! Stephen screamed, but Mom wouldn’t. She threw herself backwards so hard he could hear plaster sprinkling loose from the ceiling below them. Stephen let go, the wind knocked out of him, and as he lay there gasping his Mom rolled over and got to her knees. She straddled him, and placed her left hand over his mouth. Without so much as blinking — so much as blinking! — she pinched his nose shut with her right hand. Stephen could feel his lungs closing off and his breathing diminish almost immediately.

He would have died but for Ted, who shouted through tears:
Hey! Stop it, Mrs. Haber! Where’s my Mom! MOM
! Stephen’s Mom let her only son go to finish the job on his best friend — and Stephen took the only chance he had. He grabbed the frying pan from where it had fallen and swung it the same way he’d seen his Mom swing it at Mr. Stewart. He wasn’t tall enough to have the same devastating effect — he just managed to reach the middle of her back — but it sent her to the floor twitching if not dead. Stephen yelled at Ted to run and call the police before heading out the window — followed by the pounding footsteps of his father running up the stairs.

When the police got there, they found four corpses. Which, as Ivchyn explained later, had all been according to their programming. A catastrophic termination was how he put it.
Like the paper shredder, da?
Ivchyn had smiled — still not understanding the depths of his predicament so far as Stephen was concerned.
I am glad they did not finish you too, boy. You are a treasure of the state — a true treasure
. And then his eyes had widened, and taken a quite sinister cast. He leaned forward, and spoke the words:

Baba Yaga. Manka. Vasilissa.

The old man had thought those words would shut Stephen’s own programming down — make him docile, knock any thoughts of murder from his mind; and then make him pliant to whatever new programming Ivchyn wanted to install. Baba Yaga. Manka. Vasilissa. That’s what the words were for: every sleeper in the
Komitet
could be switched off, their programming accessed with the little mnemonic. Had Stephen known the words the night of his parents’ death, everyone would have been spared a lot of grief. Of course, at the time they would have had a similar effect on him — his parents had been programming him since he was old enough to see straight.

It was comical, actually, watching the brief triumph in the Ivchyn’s eye turn into terror as Stephen raised the little revolver and shot him through the heart.

Thanks to Kolyokov, Stephen wasn’t programmed for anything these days.

But Mrs. Kontos-Wu was. “Baba Yaga. Manka. Vasilissa,” said Stephen as the cartilage in his ear made a cracking noise. “Baba Yaga — ”

“ — Manka. Vasilissa,” said the boy at the top of the book-ladder.

“Sh-sh!” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu. The boy was making her angry. Mrs. Kontos-Wu had found what she thought to be a refuge in the library; just her and the books, the wonderful smell of the old leather and house dust, cooked to a sharp intensity by the afternoon sunlight.

Lois had sent her here for a while, to relax; catch up on some reading; maybe get a little shut-eye curled up in one of the high-backed leather chairs by the windows. Let the setting sun do its work on her.
You’re putting yourself under too much pressure
, Lois had said, and Mrs. Kontos-Wu had to agree.

So the boy at the top of the ladder did nothing but tick her off. She closed the pink and blue covers of the Becky Barker book she’d picked for the afternoon, and set it down on the end table beside her.

“Just what do you think you’re doing here?” she snapped. “This isn’t the gym! Get off that ladder now!”

“Ow!” said the boy. He appeared to be on some pain. “Listen — Manka! Ow! I mean — Baba Yaga — Manka! Vasilissa!”

What a hateful, curious boy. Mrs. Kontos-Wu got up and crossed the library floor. She stood at the base of the ladder and gave it a good shake. “What kind of talk is that?” she demanded.

“Hey! Let go!” The boy’s face scrunched into a mask of pain and he swatted at his groin — as though an invisible hand were grabbing and twisting there. “Jesus! Mrs. Kontos-Wu! Wake up!”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shook her head. “I came here for a nap you — you fucking little weasel,” she said. “Talk to Lois.”

“Who?”

“Just go — fuck yourself! How about that, smart boy?”

And then the boy did the most peculiar thing. He let go of the ladder with both hands, raised a fist, and brought it down in a swift punching motion. As he did so, a stray cloud passed over the setting sun behind Mrs. Kontos-Wu, and the library was for just a few seconds plunged into the deepest darkness. When the cloud passed, Mrs. Kontos-Wu blinked and searched the library. The boy was gone. Without a trace.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shrugged and returned to her chair. She must, she assumed, have nodded off after all — and the hateful, curious boy had been nothing more than a dream. An unusually intense one, to be sure — it wasn’t every night that Mrs. Kontos-Wu found herself sleepwalking through the library — but a dream nonetheless.

Stephen winced as the disinfectant settled into the twin gashes across his cheek and started to fizz. The fizzing stung, but Stephen had expected as much; the disinfectant would have plenty of work to do there. Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s nails were filthy, and probably they were home to more harmful bacteria than a crack-house toothbrush. Stephen hoped the disinfectant would be enough; Stephen’s immune system wasn’t up to dealing with stragglers.

It could have been worse, of course. The gashes across his cheek were the only part of Stephen’s skin that Mrs. Kontos-Wu had broken. The other injuries she’d inflicted were the kind that didn’t come with a mark; she’d twisted his ear hard enough to leave an ache that seemed to reach all the way down to his tonsils, and she’d twisted his balls hard enough to send another tree-root of pain up as high as his tonsils. But that was as far as it went. She’d missed his eyes, left him his teeth, and hadn’t pulled out more than a few strands of hair or broken even a single bone.

Indeed, it could have been much worse. In her weakened state, Mrs. Kontos-Wu succumbed with little fuss when Stephen had brought his fist hard against the side of her head. She hadn’t even made it through the bathroom door to where Kolyokov slept.

And overall — cut for cut, injury for injury — taking down Mrs. Kontos-Wu had been a piece of cake.

So why was Stephen shaking?

It might, he thought, have something to do with the mnemonic. It should have worked. Hell, nine times out of ten it would work — if Kolyokov was the dream-walker, and Kolyokov was the master. The mnemonic was a serious enough trump card that Stephen was on standing orders to kill anyone who heard it in the context of use. It was tangible mojo.

And yet here, he’d used the mnemonic four times, and the dream-walker hadn’t budged.

Who the hell was it in there? Stephen stuck his head out the bathroom door to check, make sure the restraints were holding. They were: he’d strapped Mrs. Kontos-Wu to the bed with thick leather belts that Kolyokov had brought over from Russia along with the tank. He hoped they’d be enough to hold the dream-walker when Mrs. Kontos-Wu came to.

Stephen was more worried about what would happen to him when Kolyokov came to. The old man’s mood wouldn’t be improved by the sight of Mrs. Kontos-Wu tied up in bed. It would only be improved slightly if Stephen could convince him that in tying her up, he had been doing nothing more than saving Kolyokov’s life.

On the whole, Stephen would have rather let the old bastard sleep, and figure this situation out on his own. But that, he knew, would be the worst mistake of all. Kolyokov trusted Stephen to a point — but he didn’t trust him enough to teach him the dream-walking tricks. If Stephen left Kolyokov out of the loop in a situation such as this? Kolyokov’s rage would be limitless.

So Stephen propped open the door and turned back to the sensory deprivation tank that dominated the room.

“Now or never,” he said, and gave the locking wheel a quick turn. The door opened easily.

Worries of Kolyokov’s anger evaporated in the stink that wafted out. Stephen’s image of Kolyokov the master dream-walker was instantly replaced by that of Fyodor the incontinent old man. Stephen took his hand from his nose and sniffed again to confirm it: the old man had done it. Pissed himself, and — yes, and shat himself too. Probably a couple of hours ago. In the enclosed space of the tank, the smell had thickened — notably foul even among the catalogue of stenches Stephen had learned to recognize from his years on the streets.

“Sir?” Stephen stepped back to the opening, and peered inside. Kolyokov kept the bathroom lighting low — so as to not shock his eyes when he woke. The light level meant that Stephen couldn’t see much of Kolyokov in the tank, however. All he could make out was a fan of hair spreading in thick grey tentacles through the swamp made by Kolyokov’s bladder and bowel. Stephen leaned closer, tried not to choke, and whispered: “Sir. You must — wake up.”

Nothing. Stephen cursed. He wished there was a mnemonic to wake the master as well as
Baba Yaga, Manka, Vasilissa
woke his underlings. Grimacing, Stephen reached into the tank and touched Kolyokov’s forehead. He recoiled as quickly. It felt waxy and cool to the touch. Kolyokov didn’t stir.

“Shit.” Maybe the dream-walker’s visit had been redundant. Was Kolyokov dead in his tank?

Stephen reached in further, found Kolyokov’s wattled throat. He searched for a pulse. Nothing.

“Shit shit shit.” Dead. Fucking dead in the tank. What the fuck had happened? A stroke? Heart attack?

Stephen wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Kolyokov was only getting older, and more to the point refusing to accept the fact that he was getting older. He ate badly and drank too much and got all his exercise dream-walking in young people’s bodies. Sooner or later, something would happen. Today, something had.

Stephen returned to the main phone and picked up the telephone. It rang twice at the main desk before Richard answered.

“Ye-e-es sir?”

“Richard,” said Stephen, “we’ve got a situation here. Send up Miles immediately.”

“Muh-iles? Isn’t he-e up there a-lready?”

“No,” said Stephen, “he’s not. He didn’t — ”

— didn’t make it.

Stephen mentally kicked himself. Of course he didn’t make it. Miles had been shadowing Mrs. Kontos-Wu. Mrs. Kontos-Wu had a dream-walker in her. A dream-walker who was no doubt expecting a shadow.

Stephen glared over at the bed. Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyes were open, and whoever it was behind them glared back.

“All right Richard,” said Stephen, “you’re going to have to come up here yourself. It’s an emergency.”

“Sir — I-I ca-an’t leave — ”

“An
emergency
,” Stephen repeated. “I need you up here — now!”

He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” Stephen crossed the room to the bedside. “What the fuck did you do with Miles!” Stephen shouted. “You fucking killed him, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu blinked and smiled a little.

“Well fuck you, whoever you are!” Stephen could feel his eyes heating up. Tears were starting. “Fuck you! Get the fuck out of her! You got nothing to do here, all right? Get out!”

Stephen wanted to punch her again, but as he raised his hand to do so, he saw the smile broaden.

“Go ahead,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu in thickly accented English. Stephen lowered his hand. He would only be hitting Mrs. Kontos-Wu, he knew. Whoever it was that was dream-walking her wouldn’t even feel a sting.

“Baba Yaga,” he said. “Manka.”

“Vasil-issa,” finished Mrs. Kontos-Wu. Her mouth enveloped the word like it was melting chocolate. “Baba Yaga. Manka. Vasilissa. Funny words.”