Soul Full of Guns: Dave vs the Monsters (11 page)

Colonel Varatchevsky shook her head.

What was happening to the world?

And why did the interview end so abruptly? Hooper seemed to relax as this Elizabeth woman flirted with him and flattered him. Again, this did nothing to raise him in Karin’s estimation. He seemed as easily led by his cock as Martin Gnoji. But that did not make them very rare among their gender, did it?

Unlike Gnoji, Hooper had enough sense to at least pretend at modesty, but it was a thin pretense. His avowal of how lucky he had been to slay the Hunn—a BattleMaster no less! Surely an exaggeration!—did not impress her as being even remotely sincere. It was very much an American’s gesture of, “Aw shucks, t’weren’t nothing, ma’am.” All doubtless calculated to reduce the television woman to the same pants-less state as Hooper himself as soon as they met in person.

She was about to watch the recording for the sixth time when Vladimir returned.

“It is time,” he said. “You must go to the consulate.”

She could not help smiling at the absurdity of this suggestion. The building was under surveillance by all of the American security services.

“So I shall just walk up? Or drive. Or maybe catch a cab?” she said.

“No. You shall ride.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The ex-fil men wished her luck. Little Nikita hugged her, all but jumping on her like a large dog. Josef, always the stern and righteous one, embarrassed Karin by going to one knee and bowing his head, as though venerating a religious icon. Vlad shook her hand, a strong grip, but one she dared not return lest she crush his strong hand to gristle and pulp. Even Leonid parted with a nod that could have been interpreted as something approaching deference.

They did her one last professional service.

“There is a motorcycle in the street outside,” said Vladimir, handing her the keys. “A Honda. Change into these and take this to the consul.”

He produced a large brown shopping bag and a long plastic tube of the sort used to transport documents and blueprints. She thought for a moment that he had kept the motorcycle leathers she’d taken from the luckless courier on the first night of her strange adventure, but these were newer, less scuffed.

“They will fit you better,” he said. “You will not stand out from the couriers who have been coming and going from the consul many times every hour since the attack on New Orleans. Park out the front. A space has been reserved for you. Just walk in as though you were anybody else there on business.”

“Thank you,” she said, addressing them all. “I know you would have taken me home if you could.”

“It is my hope that we will, very soon,” replied Vladimir and she could see through his swollen bruises and blackened eye that he was sincere.

###

There was a slightly unreal aspect to being out on her own again. She had not been alone or unmonitored for a week. She found the city a fantastical place under bright spring skies. Multicolored blooms painted the trees in Central Park, filling the air with a sweet and heady aroma. It was as though nothing had happened. She was isolated within her helmet and leathers of course, and she crossed the short distance to the consulate on E91st Street on a motorbike, further cutting her off from human contact. But apart from the screaming headlines of newspaper stands, there was no evidence that the world was any different.

The street outside the consulate appeared busy, but Karin had never been there and so had nothing by which to judge it. She avoided looking in the direction of the separate observation posts that she knew of, staffed by the CIA and OSCAR. She was simply a courier, delivering banal documents. She would run them to reception and be on her way. There were indeed two bicycle couriers arriving at the same time as her, and one woman on a motorcycle who appeared to be leaving. Her motorcycle was a little moped, however, not a growling power bike like Karin rode.

Colonel Varatchevsky parked in the slot she had been assigned, removed the document tube in which Sorrow slept and hustled up the steps into the consulate and, effectively, legally, onto the soil of her native land. A great weight fell from her mind when she had done so.

###

The great weight returned with crushing suddenness as the third secretary explained what she must do.

“But Comrade Secretary,” she demurred, “surely my place is at home. I assure you, these creatures know nothing of borders or boundaries. They are as likely to appear in St Basil’s or the Bolshoi as anywhere.”

The third secretary was not in fact the third secretary. He was the GRU’s senior officer in the continental United States, the fourth-ranking officer of the Second Directorate, no less. He did not stand on rank or browbeat his underling, however. He seemed almost pained by the orders he had to convey. Next to him, General Podolski from the Defense Ministry, newly arrived from Moscow via London, seemed altogether more true to type; a glowering, colorless man, he gave every impression of personally resenting Varatchevsky for the inconvenience she had put him to.

He did not speak for a long time.

Third Secretary Mikhail Sitnikov did all the talking and likewise took responsibility for hosting the discussion. He offered hot tea and chilled vodka, and quietly pointed Karin towards three trays of sandwiches, “should she feel hungry at any point”.

At first she felt ridiculous, reporting to these men in their Savile Row suits while she was dressed like some cartoon biker bitch. Her discomfort changed to surprise, incredulity and even anger when Sitnikov explained exactly what they expected of her.

“But he is a pig, Comrade Secretary!”

“Yes,” the third secretary sighed. “I too have been following the reports of his exploits. Both in New Orleans and Las Vegas. We are not putting you into a honey trap, Colonel. But we do need to know if this man has the potential to threaten state security.”

She almost laughed.

These were not Sitnikov’s words. They were his orders. She could feel the disconnect between what he said and what he actually thought as a great, hollow space between each word.

“And the Horde? And the Qwm and the other sects? What of their threat to state security? I have much I need to tell my controllers.”

“We are your controllers,” Podolski said at last. His voice was flat and empty of fellow feeling. “You will brief us before you leave.”

“That will take some time,” Karin warned, thinking of all she now knew, of all that Pr’chutt un Threshrendum could tell them.

“We had best begin then,” Sitnikov said almost in apology. “Hooper is already in New York. He arrived with Agent Trinder three hours ago.”

“Trinder! He works with Trinder now and you expect me to cultivate him? OSCAR attempted to capture me and Trinder tried to kill me a few days ago.”

“Things change,” said Podolski.

“Not men like him,” she shot back.

Sitnikov went on in his calm, unhurried fashion. “Colonel, we need you to assess Hooper. You will make the decision as to whether he is regarded as a potential ally against this Horde, or just another threat to the Federation. I remind you, Colonel, that as fearsome as these creatures seem, they are still bugaboos from the Dark Ages. Medieval fright puppets. They fight with bows and arrows and swords. They wear chain mail. Mostly.”

“I wish they would wear more,” Podolski interjected.

“Indeed,” Sitnikov agreed. “As terrible a scourge as they might once have been, Comrade Colonel, one American nuclear warhead could do infinitely more damage to the Rodina than a massed army of these things. And the Americans now have another weapon. This Hooper. We consider it significant that he has passed from civilian control into the hands of OSCAR.”

“Very significant,” said the other man.

“We are aware of intense competition amongst the various security services in this country to secure Hooper for themselves. They see him for what he is. A weapon. You will first determine whether this new weapon is likely to be turned on us,” Sitnikov continued, “and if so, how we might defend ourselves against it.”

Karin sipped at her glass of tea.

“I would hope I was our first defense against him,” she said. “Were he to become a threat it would be my duty, surely?”

The two officers seemed satisfied with that, the Defense Ministry official especially so.

“That is good, Comrade Colonel,” Podolski said. “Because if you conclude that Hooper poses such a danger, you are to terminate him. Immediately. I give you this order now. Please acknowledge.”

Karin put down her tea and snapped to attention.

“Yes sir, Comrade General. It will be done. But what of Clearance? The FBI. Even the New York police? I am still a fugitive in this country.”

Sitnikov waved away the suggestion of any problem.

“Comrade General Podolski is here in America to specifically negotiate your free passage and ongoing cooperative arrangements to meet the common threat. The Americans have been greatly unsettled by the bugaboos. They have agreed in principle to set aside the issue of your previous operations. We do not expect Trinder will be an obstacle. He is to—”

Sitnikov froze.

###

Karin stared at him, waiting, but not for long, because it was not long before she realized the third secretary had not paused to gather his thoughts, or been distracted by something else in the room. He had not stopped talking. He had just stopped.

Everything had stopped. The two men were frozen as though caught in a photograph. Karin darted a look behind her, but saw only the drawing room in which they conversed. The double doors were shut. She hurried over to the windows and quickly scanned the street outside. Her heart lurched. The city seemed trapped in some magical binding spell.

She shook her head and shivered, forcing acceptance to come. With acceptance she could move forward.

But it was hard.

Of all the nonsense and borderline psychosis of the last week, nothing had threatened to twist her head clean off like this. Trinder’s raid? That was business. The attack of the Threshrend? Yes, that was admittedly deeply strange. But in the end, the daemon was an animal of sorts; sentient, evil, from another world, but a creature nonetheless and one she had slain with her own hands. The enchanted sword? The psychic powers? These things too were deeply unusual and unsettling. But they were not unimaginable. What little girl has not imagined herself a princess with a magic wand? How many stupid books and movies have turned on fantasies of a sixth sense, or some other extrasensory potential. The American author Stephen King had made himself richer than the Tsar with such foolishness.

But this?

The whole world in stasis?

Karin felt herself unmoored and floating away from
any
connection to reality. Sitnikov and Podolski still stood behind her, but now they were as wax dummies. Not lifeless, but utterly motionless.

“Comrade Secretary? Comrade General?”

Her voice was irresolute. Not yet frightened, but not at all confident. She returned to them and examined her glass of tea. It was hot and liquid. She had been half-expecting a frozen or gelatinous mass. Instead she sipped at it and found it to be no different. Perhaps a little cooler, but then it would have cooled just slightly since she had last taken a drink.

Next Karin carefully placed her fingers against the pulse in Sitnikov’s throat. There was none, and yet there could be no doubt that the warm flesh under her touch still lived.  

Quickly now, Karin retrieved Sorrow from where she had rested her against the empty fireplace. The song of the enchanted weapon was unchanged. The fallen soul which animated the spirit of the blade had not deserted her. But the rest of the world had. Back at the tall windows, Karin could see the city outside still frozen. Except for a lone, blackclad figure striding up the road towards the building.

Hooper.

He was dressed in the tactical uniform of an American special weapons officer. He wore a fighting knife strapped to one leg and a pistol holster on the other side. And he carried before him the war hammer with which he had fought in New Orleans.

“
Shit
,” she breathed.

Was he responsible for this? Had he somehow stopped the world so that he alone might pass through it. He and Varatchevsky. It would explain the great speed with which he appeared to move on the video from New Orleans. Karin watched him, searching for the carrier wave of his thoughts and…

SHIT!

She recoiled from the force and clarity of psychogenic energy coming off him. This was not like reading other men. It was awful.

This brutish-looking man advancing on her with malign intent had been sent by Donald Trinder. To capture or kill her, no matter what. His mind roiled and contended within itself, but that did not surprise Karin Varatchevsky. Until a few days ago this Hooper had been a normal, if unpleasant human being. But he had fallen in amongst
monstrs
and now moved in company with men whose schemes were far beyond his limited abilities to comprehend.

She shut out as much of the emotion and as many of the jumbled, irrational thoughts radiating from him as she could. It was like trying to think in the middle of competing rock concerts. Hooper’s signal died away, never disappearing completely, but fading enough that she could think clearly again.

She laughed, a short bitter sound.

Podolski was going to be both very happy and very unhappy.

He had been confirmed in his belief that Hooper was a threat and needed to be put down.

Her first thought was to find a gun. She raced out of the drawing room, the double doors banging open behind her. After wasting precious time running up and down the second floor corridor, she cursed herself and descended the main staircase to the two uniformed men who guarded access to the upper floors. They were as still and lost in time as Sitnikov and Podolski. But they were not armed as she had hoped.

She could hear Hooper in the reception area now. There was no time left to find the armory and Karin had no idea whether a relatively complex system like a machine pistol, or even a simple semi-automatic would fire when she needed it. A pity, but she would have to fall back on her own resources. Hurrying back upstairs as quietly as possible, she stopped and moved a small table with a vase of flowers away from the wall, creating a small visual glitch in the long and elegant corridor, something that would draw the eye and invite consideration, hesitation. She would only need a fraction of a second.