Rasputin's Bastards (22 page)

Kolyokov smiled.

“Children?” He pushed himself to his feet, and stared into the wall of cloud and dust that now surrounded him in a vortex just fifty feet across. “Vladimir? Doonya? Which one of my beauties is this?”

The cloud rumbled a deep laugh.

No children here
.

“Ah,” said Kolyokov, “there is no need to dissemble, my children. I am quite at your mercy. For I am nearly dead, now, is that not so?”

That
, said the cloud,
is the only thing that is so. Understand, Fyodor Kolyokov, that the Children you have been seeking are quite beyond your reach now
.

“I see.”

There is only Me
.

“Only you. I mean, forgive me — You.”

The cloud was silent, but for the lashing of its winds and the rumbles of thunder in its belly.

“So what is my predicament. Am I talking with God now?”

Only Me
.

“Yes. Upper case ‘Me.’ You’re claiming to be God, am I right?”

Not — quite
.

“Well, let me tell you something, not-quite God,” said Kolyokov. “I never bowed to you in my life — and I won’t now.”

A moment ago, you were weeping
.

“Yes. You’re omniscient, so you can tell that poor little Kolyokov is weeping from thirty kilometres south of the metaphor. Forgive me if I’m not impressed.”

There is no reason you should be. We both know, Fyodor, that the metaphor is but our own construct — and the powers of a God can be fashioned there as readily as can a convincing bowl of soup. But I repeat: a moment ago you were weeping
.

Kolyokov shifted and wiped a strand of hair that was tickling his eye. He coughed; the cloud now stank of strawberry and garlic and peat.

“A man faces his death as best he is able,” said Kolyokov.

You think you are dying?

“Did you not say as much yourself?”

Yes. For dying was how I found you. But Fyodor — you must know that dying is not dead. You may yet be saved
.

Fyodor threw back his head and laughed.

“Saved? Ha! So You
are
God! A very Orthodox God, yes? Do You want me to confess my sins before we depart unto Heaven? I warn You, terrible cloud, it could take some time — for I have been a very wicked Kolyokov and I have not been to confession in seventy-two years! Ha!”

The cloud rumbled and quaked, and the vortex for a moment drew closer to him. Kolyokov could see a blur of rocks and branches in its substance. When it spoke again, its voice was as a thunderclap in Kolyokov’s head.

You have not changed, you bastard
.

It took Kolyokov a moment to regain his senses. The intensity of the cloud’s voice was bad enough — if such a shout had entered his Physick brain, it might have caused him a stroke. But that intensity was nothing compared to the shock of recognition.

“You,” he said as he sat up and dusted himself off.

Yes
.

Kolyokov felt that ball-tightening anxiety all wicked men feel at one time or another in their lives — the day they enter the interview for a coveted new position, only to discover the interviewer is a former lover with whom things ended poorly; the night they come home to find their wife and mistress sipping tea together in the kitchen. And most of all on that day very near the end, when they sit alone on a vast plain beneath a cloud that could be God, and at once recognize by Her voice that not only is God a woman . . .

. . . but . . .

It is I
.

“Shit,” said Kolyokov.

You don’t seem pleased to see me
.

“Well,” said Kolyokov carefully, “I’m not really seeing you — am I?”

The cloud rumbled with deep laughter.
This is me now, Fyodor. Me. No dissembling, as you put it
.

Kolyokov had to think quickly; this was a worrying development, this thing above him.

“And how — how does that come to pass?” he said, smiling ingratiatingly. “The last I recall, you had . . . you had the fine features of a Romanov, my dear — the delicate form of — ”

He was cut off by an angry thunderclap.

Spare me! I am beyond the flesh, Fyodor, and so are you! That is why I am here
!

Kolyokov swallowed nervously.

Ha! You are more fearful of an old friend than you are the Creator. You truly haven’t changed
.

“Am I — ” Kolyokov licked his lips. “Am I facing your wrath, then?”

Far from it. I am come here to offer you a bargain
.

“What bargain?”

Very simple. You are dying: your body is crumbled, and your mind only lives now in the substance of the Discourse. Before long, you will have vanished, but for your presence in the imperfect memories of others. Do you wish this for yourself
?

“Of — ” Kolyokov felt himself tremble at the thought of it. “Of course not.”

Then
, she said,
here is your escape. Join me, Fyodor Kolyokov — in the cloud. Together we’ll live forever — in more than memory. Far more
.

Kolyokov squinted up the moving walls of the vortex, to the ochre cloud ceiling, what seemed like hundreds of metres above. A glow descended from it now — like a light from Heaven. Or, thought Kolyokov ruefully, like the special effects glow they used on television when showing a flying saucer abducting FBI agents who should know better.

“Bullshit,” said Kolyokov. “I don’t know how you’ve done it, but you’ve done it. You’ve spirited the Children away from me and you’ve hidden them somewhere. You just want me out of the way so you can do what you want with them.”

The vortex tightened so close that Kolyokov had to hop quickly to avoid being pulled up in it.

You are going to die if you don’t come with me, Fyodor
!

“Ha! That’s what you want me to think! You’ve constructed this metaphor most carefully, my dear! As I look around, it has all the signatures of the metaphors you’d make for us in the old days, yes? Those great romantically constructed clouds and thunderstorms were your favourite, weren’t they? All that’s missing is the Ivan Rebroff music in the background and the warm firelight, and that cheap, sweet wine you thought so highly of! Clever witch, you’ve done nothing but made a metaphor to trick me into mourning my own passing!”

Fyodor, Fyodor. Your paranoia that weakened you in the war will prove your undoing now! Accept my bargain and join me
!

“My paranoia,” said Kolyokov quietly as the vortex narrowed to tug at his shoulders and whip his shoelaces against his ankles, “is what kept me alive.”

It’s not helping you now
, said the cloud. And with that, she snatched Kolyokov from his feet and high into the whirling chaos of her vortex.

The feeling was not dissimilar to the course their affair had taken those many decades ago.

They had met while dreaming an interrogation. The KGB had pulled in what they believed to be an American sleeper in Berlin, and City 512 had its orders to confirm this supposition.

Kolyokov remembered the day the orders had come in. He was just a month shy of his nineteenth birthday, but had already participated in three successful operations. A regular little Hero of the Workers — although most of his involvement had been in manipulating those workers that had been implanted as sleepers: strictly internal work. Foreign espionage remained his dream.

“Your dream is about to come true, Comrade Kolyokov,” said Vasili Borovich, his titular commander, as he revealed the mission over tea that morning. The two were sitting in an office in one of the lower sub-levels of City 512 — an area baffled with the new e-generators that were supposed to keep eavesdroppers out. “We are engaged in serious work. We think that our friends in the KGB have uncovered an agent who is — I would not say our equal. But formidable.”

“Well,” said Kolyokov.

“This agent is American — he has been active in North Africa — and he’s got contacts all through Germany and Czechoslovakia.” Vasili smiled and opened the spigot on the little brass samovar, refilled his tea. “So you see? Finally, young Fyodor Kolyokov gets to see the world.”

Kolyokov laughed at that. Kolyokov was only young compared to Vasili, by the fine measure that children bring to the lay of their youth. Vasili was in fact only a year ahead of Kolyokov — and not, in truth, much more experienced. At that, he was still one of the eldest in City 512 at that time and he lorded it over the rest of them, like an upperclassman.

“So how’s this going to work?” said Kolyokov. “I’m happy as ever to serve the Party and the People — but I don’t think I’ve ever even heard of anyone doing an interrogation like this before, with a hostile mind, who might be trained.”

Vasili nodded. “It’s tricky. That’s why it won’t just be you. I’ll be working it too. And there’s one more. From Canada.”

Fyodor raised his eyebrows. “We’re working with Canadians now?”

“Idiot. No. I said
from Canada
. Not a Canadian. One of our operatives there.”

Fyodor set his teacup down and squirmed. He had to pee something awful — even then, he had a bladder that wouldn’t keep quiet for very long. Vasili could hear it too: you didn’t carry many secrets from each other at City 512. He let a little smirk cross his lips.

“So he’s coming all the way from Canada for this,” said Kolyokov impatiently. “It seems wasteful.”

Vasili’s smirk broadened and he laughed. “Not he, my friend — she. And yes — all the way from Canada, where she’s been — ”

But Kolyokov didn’t wait for the rest. He rushed to the lavatory — where he would, in a moment, void his bladder, and scrub his hands and face to wash away the terrible premonition that stained him as Vasili spoke the words:

Not he, my friend — she
.

Kolyokov’s isolation tank was shiny as a new car in those days, and it didn’t smell at all. It was situated in a room nearer the surface — insulated from the thrumming e-generators that would make dream-walking impossible, and just deep enough that the roar of the trucks and the airfield over-top didn’t likewise disturb the dreamers’ sleep. Its Soyuz urinal even worked — so the fullness of Kolyokov’s twitchy bladder was neither here nor there when it came to dream-walking.

They would be dream-walking to the subject. The location of City 512 was a secret kept from all but the most senior members of the KGB — and bringing a prisoner who could well be from America’s counterpart into City 512 would represent an insane breach in security. An old farmstead in East Germany, surrounded by black cars, was the subject’s prison. Comrades Kolyokov and Borovich would meet the Canadian operative there. Together, they would dream-walk into the American spy’s mind, in a process not dissimilar to the one they used to operate trained sleepers. But they wouldn’t operate this one’s mind. They’d crack it, and toss it like a dissident’s flat.

“Red,” said Kolyokov as the technician turned the latch on his tank. “And orange, and yellow . . .”
And green . . .

Oh, how Kolyokov loved dream-walking in those days. To step from his imperfect flesh and into the crafted, beautiful form of his metaphorical body. They were all Gods — terrible and beautiful in the guise of their dreams. Vasili might erase his thin face and pale, too-long fingers — extend the jawline that in reality receded beneath a slight overbite. Kolyokov could trim away the roll of fat that even then spread over his belt, and replace it with the sharp-lined torso that only seemed to appear in sculptures.

In such an idealized form, Kolyokov rose over top his tank — up past the gantries, over the rows of fluorescents that hung in a row on thick black wires.

“Hey — Fyodor! Wait for your leader!”

Kolyokov stopped, and hovering there waiting, glanced down at the tanks. He marvelled at the luminescent thing that rose out of the tank marked BOROVICH.

“Look at you,” said Kolyokov as Vasili Borovich’s newly tuned metaphor rose to join him.

Vasili had pulled out all the stops. His chin was sculpted heroically, to social-realist proportions, as was his newly minted chest. His hair, clipped short to keep out the lice, here hung to his shoulders in a wild black mane. At first, Kolyokov thought he might be wearing robes, but as Vasili rose Kolyokov saw they were no such thing.

Vasili had given himself wings — white angelic wings, over a slim, naked form that would have fit snugly on an Olympic swimmer.

In spite of himself, Kolyokov laughed.

“Comrade Commander,” he said, “don’t tell me you’ve taken up religion? Or is it a woman?”

To his surprise, two pink spots appeared on Vasili’s magnificently sharp cheekbones, and his perfect blue eyes glanced downward.

Kolyokov laughed again and gave one of Vasili’s immense wings a tug with one hand.

“She must be a wonder,” he said.

“You have no idea,” said Vasili, still not meeting Kolyokov’s eye. “Now let’s go — it’s almost time for the rendezvous.”

And with a single flap of his wings, Vasili Borovich led the way to Germany, and the interrogation.

A thin layer of snow enshrouded the farmstead. The little cluster of buildings was surrounded by a web of tire tracks, spreading out from a smaller circle of vehicles tucked close into the house. Yellow light came from one window, stretching across the mucky white for what looked like twenty metres before it faded. In that light, Kolyokov could see the shadows of the KGB men as they paced to and fro — waiting for the interrogation to begin.

Kolyokov and Vasili settled to the ground outside that window and peered inside.

There were three KGB men in a large room that had at one time been a family room. One tended a coal fire in a little pot-bellied stove in one corner. Another was walking back and forth, his eyes darting nervously about the room. A third smoked a cigarette in a chair, beside a bed where their subject, a heavy-set young man with curly blond hair, was strapped naked.

“Look at them,” said Vasili with a grin. “They’re scared out of their minds.”