Rasputin's Bastards (30 page)

“Hey.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked up from the book and smiled. Lois was back! She was there, framed in the doorway to her dormitory room. Mrs. Kontos-Wu had to shield her eyes from the light — it was certainly bright out in the hallway! Brighter than daylight. Brighter than the sun, Mrs. Kontos-Wu was willing to bet.

“Hello Lois,” she said.

“Hello,” said Lois. “Are you enjoying the book?”

“Yes. Hey — how come you’re talking like that?” Lois was speaking with a funny accent today. Or a funnier accent than her usual Bostonian drawl, anyway. She sounded like Mrs. Kontos-Wu imagined that foreign secret agent talked in Chapter Nine, before Honey had taken her out with the ice pick.

“You know why I’m talking this way,” said Lois. “You know who I am.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu felt a wiggle in her stomach. She drew her knees up, and tried to focus back on the book. “Chapter Fourteen,” she read aloud. “‘A Necessary Evil.’”

“Snap out of it,” said Lois. “You know that this is all make-believe. It was shattered by that Kolyokov bastard. You shouldn’t come back here anymore.”

“Fuck off.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu said it before she knew what she was doing. Eyes wide, she put a hand to her mouth and drew a shocked breath. She couldn’t believe she’d just said that!

“You fuck off,” said Lois. “I was hoping to be able to count on you as a conscious operative — not have to dream-walk you through your manoeuvres. There are other things for me to be doing.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu closed the book. She could barely make out the words anyway; the light from the hallway was literally blinding her.

“Stop it!” bawled Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “I don’t want to be a conscious operative or whatever it is you say I should be! I’m busy reading! And I happen to like it here!”

Lois stepped into the room, and reached down to take Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s hand. “Of course you like it here,” said Lois sadly. “It was made for you to like it here. But if you stay here, you’ll die.”

As Lois spoke, the light from behind her grew — tearing into the substance of the wallpaper and the rug and the little study desk in the corner, like hot flame across newspapers. Mrs. Kontos-Wu tried to cover her eyes with the book, but it was no good. The light passed through like it was made of glass.

Lois tugged at her arm. “Come on!”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu had no choice. She stood up in a dizzying rush, and stumbled forward. Lois caught her in both arms, and helped her steady herself on a floor that seemed maddeningly insubstantial.

“Now,” she said, “pay attention. We’ve been holding Shadak and his men off as best we can, pitting them against one another. But there are more than we can deal with at any one time. So you’ve got to move quickly. You’re at the base of the tower now. When I say, you’ll lead your two friends in a run out the main door. You will run to your left, where you’ll see a large gatehouse. Run through the main gate, and wait. There’s a truck that’s making its way up from Silifke. It should be here in a few minutes. When it shows up at the gate, you’ll have a minute clear where you can get into the back. Do you understand?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu let the programming sink in. “Yes, sir,” she said.

Lois slapped her. “No! Don’t run a program through your head! That’s not how it’s going to be anymore! Do you
understand
?”

“I understand,” she said.

“Then good. Now listen carefully,” said Lois. “Manka,” she said. “Vasilissa. Baba Yaga.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu blinked. The light was gone. She was in a room at the base of the tower. There were bodies everywhere. Her eyes stung and her mouth and nose were wet.

And apparently she was propped on poor little Stephen Haber’s shoulder. “Zhanna?” said Stephen. “You’re back?”

“Who the hell is Zhanna?” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “Come on, kid.” She looked from Stephen to an old man, who was staring up at her with an altogether creepy awe. “You too. We’ve just got a few minutes, if we want to get out of here alive.”

The old man grinned. “Ah,” he said. “Your friend is back in herself. See?” Stephen squinted at her. “Are you?” he asked. “No bullshit this time?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu thought about that — about exactly where she was; whether this was herself really; and whether the bullshit was finished or not — but immediately pushed it down again.

“No bullshit.” She said it uncertainly, but Stephen’s relieved smile showed he hadn’t picked up on it. That kid could be dense some days, no doubt about it.

Together, the three of them climbed down the rest of the stairs and made a break for the arched doorway at the tower’s base.

Shadak awoke with a mouthful of brackish spit and a sharp lump travelling down his throat. The lump was, Shadak knew with doomed certainty, the key to the padlock that held the chains in place around his shoulders and wrists and ankles. He let out a volatile stream of curses. The two men who stood over him looked down at him apologetically.

“We are sorry, Mr. Shadak,” said one.

“We do not know how this came to be,” said the second. “We found you like this. And — ”

“You see, we cannot find the key,” said the first.

Shadak swallowed, and felt the key slide another few inches down his gullet. Christ — it was going to cut his insides to ribbons if he didn’t get to a doctor soon.

“That is because,” said Shadak, “I have swallowed the key.”

“One of the devils has made you do that,” said the first. “Just as one made me shoot poor Tomas, and caused Pyotr here try to shoot you although you were not looking.”

The second — Pyotr — gave Tomas a look.

“Where — ” Shadak winced, as the key tore past a sphincter. “Where are the prisoners?” he finished.

“Escaped, sir,” said Tomas. “In a truck. Viktor tried to pursue on a motorcycle, but I am afraid that I threw a chain into his spokes before he could get going.”

“He is all right,” said Pyotr.

Shadak couldn’t have cared less whether Viktor was all right or not. But he didn’t want to antagonize his men at this point. It was a small blessing they were still apologizing and not just leaving him to die.

“That is fine,” said Shadak. He forced himself to ignore the pain. He modulated the tone of his voice to the familiar, pleasant lilting. He forced his mouth from a grimace, to pleasant repose. He looked first Victor and then Pyotr in the eye. “We will catch up to them later. For now, I want you to get to work on these chains. And contact our surgeon in Silifke. I believe that I will have need of him presently.”

“Of course, sir,” said Viktor, moving off to the tool shed to fetch metal-cutters. “I will find the phone,” said Pyotr, stepping around the corner of the main house.

And so Amar Shadak sat alone for a space beneath the brightening sky. He leaned back, and stared into it — the still deep blue, marred here and there by a light pasting of sun-painted cloud.

Men could lose themselves in such a vista. Too many men strove to do so. And that, thought Shadak as the key cut sharply into his innards, was the thing.

That was the thing.

“I’ll — ” Shadak coughed, and felt the hated key hitch higher in his chest. He tasted salt in a mouthful of phlegm.

“I’ll skin her,” he said, and lowered his head against his shoulder, as the old love for her sunk like a spill of acid through the little cuts the key made down the middle of his chest. Alone beneath the lightening sky, Amar Shadak began to weep.

“You are a KGB agent. Elite. You know all sorts of tricks for killing a fellow. You can make yourself unseen should you need to. You have other tricks to get people to tell you things they’d rather not, and more tricks still to make sure that they can’t get that kind of information out of you. Where do you think you learned these tricks? On the street?”

Alexei shook his head. The lights were flashing more rapidly — in a way that caused his testicles to pull close to his abdomen and his fingers to grip painfully into the plastic arm rests.

“Of course not on the street. You learned them in this place. Outside Murmansk. In the cold. It is a terrible place. But also a safe place. A place where you return when your eyes are shut — yes?”

Alexei shut his eyes. He did this every day at City 512. He sat in the chair, arcane cocktails of narcotics coursing through his veins, and shut his eyes when the flashing became too much, and retreated — retreated to the windswept field behind the low buildings of the Murmansk spy school, where eventually he would play cards with Ilyich Chenko; or to the classroom, where he would learn Trigonometry from psychotic old Czernochov, who’d beat him senseless at the slightest sign of inattention.

The spy school was a metaphor — a metaphor that his new master Fyodor Kolyokov used to train him in the ways of his cover. Alexei was barely twelve years old when this happened. Alexei could think of nothing more depressing than to relive it now. He was not sure that the baby Vladimir was doing him any favour by revealing the truth to him.

Still — truth is truth and there’s not much to be gained in its denial.

And he had to admit — it was fascinating to see the construction of his delusions in such vivid detail. Kolyokov and his team were only beginning to implant the details of his metaphor. So when Alexei, in his new metaphor, walked the field behind the school, it was more a sheet of white cloth over a soft mattress than thin snow over permafrost. Czernochov looked like the Western film actor Vincent Price. The washrooms were still in black and white. The door to the gymnasium opened onto a deep, whistling void. Dormitory B, where Alexei’s friend Chenko ostensibly slept, was simply dark — a gateway to the Id, where things chittered and floorboards creaked and cold drafts tickled the neck — but no light ever shone.

Alexei shut his eyes.

“Good,” said the voice over the speaker system. “Now. Describe to me what you see.”

“I’m on the ocean,” said Alexei. “There’s Cuba over there. Spies are everywhere.”

“Don’t joke,” said the voice. “You are not helping. Describe what you see.”

Alexei looked. He was standing at the front of the building. There was a long landing strip. The sky was a crown of brilliant blue, combed over with the thinnest wisps of cloud. Alexei squinted.

“An aircraft,” he said. “An Antonov. One of the new ones. An AN-72, it looks like. It is approaching from the west. It is filled with important men. One of them is a General with the KGB. He has business with you. One of them is a writer. A dissident, I think. Both the General and the writer are unhappy. Not for the same reasons. Their names are — are — ”

“Enough!” said the voice. “Stop joking, Kilodovich! There is no aircraft. No general. You are in school. Yes? Your teacher Fyodor Kolyokov has something to tell you.”

“Of course,” said Alexei. He turned away from the approaching Antonov. He turned back to the building, peering vainly into windows and doorways for his spy teacher Fyodor Kolyokov.

No sign of him. Alexei sighed and ran up to the school’s front doorstep. He’d have to be somewhere inside.

Of course, Alexei found the old man quickly enough. Fyodor Kolyokov was the most believable thing in the metaphor — because, at this early point, he was the only thing here based in reality. So if Alexei was in one of his bare, unformed classrooms, sitting amongst classmates that looked to have been made by an air brush, he could tell Fyodor Kolyokov instantly, by the pockmarks on his left cheek and the web of lines at the corner of his eyes; the colour of his eyes. Kolyokov drew attention here by his anomalous solidity.

It gave his proclamations more solidity too. When Kolyokov told Alexei that he was a KGB agent — a skilled assassin — that he was able to do this, and this, and that with his hands — why, when Alexei awoke and they led him from the little room, he was able to repeat the tasks as though he had trained since a boy. Once, Kolyokov had told him to put out a lit match with the tip of his tongue — to not cry out from the pain, or even flinch — and he’d done it, just like that.

Today, Kolyokov was alone in the classroom. He was wearing a blue turtleneck sweater and khaki trousers and big, black military boots that laced up to his calves. He smoked a cigarette that he’d rolled himself. He sucked deep on it, expelling the smoke through his nostrils, as he regarded Alexei.

“You,” he said, “are a KGB agent. Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right, sir,” said Alexei.

“You,” he continued, “don’t fool around with that other stuff — that dream-walking. You never did. Did you?”

“No, never,” said Alexei.

Kolyokov didn’t take his eyes off Alexei. He moved across the perfect grey floor of the proto-classroom. “You never did,” he said in a low, grim voice.

Alexei nodded. “Right.”

“Good. Answer questions truthfully. Don’t volunteer anything. Don’t look away from your interrogator. Wash your face thoroughly. Behind the ears.”

“Behind the ears,” said Alexei. “I’ve got it.”

“Good boy. Now,” said Kolyokov, taking the cigarette from his mouth and dropping it to the floor, “wake.”

Alexei found he was far less constrained when he was locked in the metaphor than during his waking time at City 512. In metaphor, he was free to explore. More and more, he found he was simply responding to programming while awake. A small part of him was able to watch him go through the motions — but it was as though he were watching the progress of a marionette, through a tiny camera mounted on the top of his head.

So he watched, as the marionette Alexei Kilodovich scrubbed his hands and face with abrasive soap — took extra time around his ears — then dressed himself in the coveralls that had been laid out for him in his little room. He pulled on his boots and laced them up, and ran a hand over his close-cropped scalp. Then he stood and waited until the door opened, and he was able to join the procession of his classmates to the mess hall.

They wore identical coveralls, and all had hair shaved to stubble on their scalps. But that was where the similarities ended. Alexei’s classmates were of all ages — the youngest one was a girl of about six years old — and there were two or three that looked to be in their seventies. There were blacks and Indians, Arabs and Asians — lots of Asians — and even a few Caucasians like Alexei. As they started to walk, the group sorted itself by ethnicity. Alexei found himself walking next to an old, balding man who wore little wire-rimmed spectacles, and a girl only a few years older than himself.