The Day Watch (49 page)

“For the guys,” he said. “May the Light show them compassion. For Tiger Cub… for Andriukha.”

They drank without clinking glasses, and Anton looked at Igor curiously. Igor began coughing and looked at his glass, perplexed.

“Anton… wait… this vodka’s fake!”

“Of course!” Anton confirmed happily. “Absolutely genuine fake vodka-pure alcohol diluted with tap water. I chose it specially. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is nowadays to buy fake vodka in the shops!”

“But why?” Igor exclaimed.

“What do you mean, why? Why did I bring you Borodinsky bread? I could have bought a loaf of fresh, tasty black

bread in any shop in Prague! And the salami too, and the pork fat. The onions would have been the only problem…”

“So this is a greeting from the motherland, is it?” said Igor, still wincing.

“Precisely.”

“Oh no… I want to greet my last morning without a headache,” Igor said seriously. He frowned and passed his hand above the bottle and the two full glasses. The liquid glimmered a lemon-yellow color for a moment. Igor explained in a slightly guilty voice: “I’m allowed to use lower magic.”

“Then pour another glass.”

“Are you in some kind of a hurry?” Igor asked, squinting at Anton as he poured the transformed vodka.

“No, where would I be going?” Anton replied. “I’d rather sit here with you and have a chat. Do you know why I changed the bottle?”

“So you’re the perpetrator?”

“Yes, it was me. Semyon brought the real thing. But I wanted to remind you that a beautiful bottle doesn’t always contain good stuff.”

Igor sighed and his face went dark: “Gorodetsky… don’t moralize with me. I was in the Watch before you were even born. I understand everything. But it’s my own fault, and I’ll take my punishment.”

“No, you don’t understand a thing,” Anton shouted angrily. “You adopt this grand pose of yours: ‘It’s my fault, I’ll take what’s coming to me,”” he said, mimicking Igor. “But what are we supposed to do? Especially now, without Tiger Cub and Andrei? You know that Gesar’s decided to give the girls who do the programming intensive training?”

“Oh, come on, Anton! There aren’t any irreplaceable Others. The Moscow Watch has hundreds of magicians and enchantresses in its reserve!”

“Yes, of course. And if we whistle, they’ll come running. Leave their families, drop their jobs and their usual concerns. They’ll take up arms, of course they will. If the active members of the Watch have disgraced themselves and given up…”

Igor sighed and began speaking abruptly and energetically, almost like the old operational agent: “Anton, I understand all this. You’re a bright guy, and you’re doing the right thing now by making me angry. You’re trying to inspire me with the will to live. You’re trying to persuade me to fight… But understand one thing-I really don’t want to fight! I really think I am guilty. I really have decided to… withdraw. Into nothingness, into the Twilight.”

“Why, Igor? I understand that anyone’s death is always a tragedy, especially if it’s your fault, but you couldn’t have foreseen…”

Igor looked up at him with eyes full of pain and shook his head. “No, Antoshka. It’s you who doesn’t understand a single thing. Do you think I’m punishing myself because that kid drowned? No.”

Anton picked up his glass and drained it in a single gulp.

“I feel sorry for the boy,” Igor went on. “Very sorry. But I’ve seen all sorts of things in my time… there have been times before when people died. And it was my fault. Children, women, old men. Have you ever, for instance, had to decide who to run to first, who to save-an uninitiated Other or an ordinary person? I have. Have you ever had to draw all the Power from a crowd-drain it completely? Knowing there’s a ninety percent probability two people in the crowd won’t be able to bear it and they’ll kill themselves? I have.”

“I’ve had to do a few things too, Igor.”

“Yes, I understand. That hurricane… Then why are you talking such nonsense? Can’t you believe it’s not all about that unfortunate kid? That I fell in love with a Dark One?”

“I can’t,” said Anton. “I just can’t! Gesar said that too, but…”

“You’d better believe Gesar,” Igor said with a bitter smile. “I love her, Anton. I still love her, even now. And I’ll go on loving her-that’s the real tragedy.”

He picked up his glass.

“Thanks at least for not setting a glass out for her on the table…” Anton could feel the fury beginning to seethe inside him. “Thanks…”

He broke off and followed Igor’s glance to the glass-fronted cupboard, where there was a glass half-filled with vodka and covered with a stale piece of bread standing among the other glasses.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Anton muttered. “Completely lost your mind! Remember, Igor-she’s a witch!”

“She was a witch,” Igor agreed with a faint, sad smile.

“She provoked you… okay, she didn’t enchant you, but she still made you fall in love with her.”

“No. She fell in love herself. And she didn’t have the slightest
i.e.
who I was.”

“Okay. Let’s accept that, you ought to know. But even so, it was provocation. By Zabulon, who knew everything that was happening…”

Igor nodded. “Yes, very probably. I’ve thought about that a lot, Anton. That fight in Butovo was obviously prepared well in advance by the Dark Ones. At the very highest level, just Zabulon and another one or two Dark Ones.

Lemesheva probably knew. Edgar and the witches didn’t.”

He didn’t even think it worth mentioning the vampires and shape-shifters.

“Well, if you agree…” Anton began.

“Wait. Yes, it was a deliberately planned operation. One of Zabulon’s intrigues. And a successful one…” Igor lowered his head. “Only what difference does that make to the way I feel about Alisa?”

Anton felt like swearing angrily. So he did, and then he said, “Igor, you’ve looked at Alisa Donnikova’s file. You must have looked at it!”

“Yes.”

“So you must understand how much blood she has on her hands! How much evil she has done? I’ve clashed with her myself several times! She’s been responsible for ruining our operations, she… she served Zabulon loyally…”

“You forgot to add that she was Zabulon’s broad,” Igor said in a dull, lifeless voice. “That the head of Moscow’s Dark Ones enjoyed having sex with her in his Twilight form, that she took part in covens when there were human sacrifices and in group orgies. Why don’t you say it? Say it, I know it all anyway. Gesar gave me the full file… he tried really hard. I know all that.”

“And you still love her?” Anton asked incredulously.

Igor raised his head, and they looked into each other’s eyes. Then Igor reached out and gently touched Anton’s hand. “Don’t be angry with me, brother Light One. Don’t despise me. And if you can’t understand, you’d better go.

Take a walk around Prague…”

“I’m trying to understand,” Anton whispered. “Honestly, I’m trying. Alisa Donnikova was a perfectly ordinary witch.

No better and no worse than all the rest. A clever, beautiful, cruel witch. Who left evil and pain in her wake wherever she went. How can you love her?”

“She was different with me,” Igor replied. “A nervous and unhappy girl who really wanted to love someone. Who had fallen in love for the first time. A girl who, unfortunately for us, the Dark Ones spotted before we did. And for her initiation they chose a moment when there was more Darkness in her soul than Light. That’s not too difficult to do with teenage girls-you know yourself. And after that it was all very simple. The Twilight drained all the goodness out of her. The Twilight turned her into what she became.”

“It’s not Alisa herself that you love,” said Anton, failing to notice that he was speaking about Donnikova in the present tense. “What you love is her idealized… no, her alternative image! The Alisa that never existed!”

“She certainly doesn’t exist now. But you’re still wrong, Anton. I love her the way she became when she lost her powers as an Other. When she was freed for just a moment from that sticky gray cobweb. Tell me, have you never had to forgive somebody?”

“Yes, I have,” Anton replied after a pause. “But not for something like that.”

“You’ve been lucky, Antoshka.”

Igor poured more vodka.

“Then tell me this…” Anton wasn’t trying to spare Igor’s feelings, but he still found it hard to get the words out.

“Why did you kill her?”

“Because she was a witch,” Igor said very calmly. “Because she caused evil and pain. Because ‘a member of the Night Watch always protects people against Dark Ones everywhere, in any country, regardless of his personal attitude to the situation.” Have you never wondered about why the Regulations include that specific phrase?

About our personal attitude to the situation? It ought to read ‘personal attitude to the Dark Ones,” but that sounds rather pitiful. So they used a eum… euph…”

“Euphemism,” Anton prompted him.

“A euphemism.” Igor laughed. “Exactly. Remember when we caught the girl vampire on the roof? You were about to fire at her point-blank, but then your vampire neighbor turned up. And you lowered your gun.”

“I was wrong,” Anton said with a shrug. “She had to be tried. That was why I stopped.”

“No, Anton. You would have shot her. And any other vampire who came running to help the criminal. But you were facing a vampire who was your friend, or at least one that you knew. And you stopped. But imagine if the choice had been between shooting and letting the criminal escape.”

“I would have shot her,” Anton said abruptly. “And Kostya too. There wouldn’t have been any choice. I’d have felt very bad about it, I agree, but I…”

“And what if it hadn’t just been someone you knew well, but the woman you loved? A human woman or an Other enchantress from either side?”

“I would have shot…” Anton whispered. “I would have shot anyway.”

“And then what?”

“I wouldn’t have allowed such a situation to arise. I just wouldn’t have allowed it!”

“Of course. The very
i.e.
of loving never enters our heads if we see the aura of Darkness. It’s the same for the Dark Ones if they see the aura of Light. But we were caught by surprise, Anton. We’d lost all our powers. And we didn’t have a choice…”

“Tell me, Igor…” Anton paused and took a breath. The vodka hadn’t done the trick, and even though the conversation was certainly intimate, it wasn’t bringing any relief. “Tell me, why didn’t you just throw Alisa out of the camp? Why didn’t you ask Gesar for help and advice? That way you would have protected people and at the same time…”

“She wouldn’t have gone,” Igor said sharply. “After all, she had legitimate reason to be there at Artek. You know what’s the most terrible thing about this whole business, Anton? Zabulon extracted the right for her to restore herself from Gesar in exchange for the same right for a third-level magician! Me, that is! Do you see how everything was all tied up together?”

“But are you sure she wouldn’t have gone away?” Anton asked.

Igor lifted up his glass without speaking. For the first time that evening they clinked glasses, but no toast was proposed. “No, Anton, I’m not sure. That’s the terrible thing, I’m not sure. I told her… I ordered her to clear out.

But that was the very first moment, when we’d only just realized who was who. When my brain still hadn’t kicked in, I was running on pure adrenaline…”

“If she loved you,” said Anton, “she would have gone. You just needed to find the right words…”

“Probably. But who can say for certain now?”

“Igor, I’m really sorry,” Anton whispered. “I don’t feel sorry for the witch Alisa, of course… don’t even ask me. I can’t shed even a single tear for her. But I feel terribly sorry for you. And I really want you to stay with us. To get through this and not let it destroy you.”

“I’ve got nothing left to live for, Anton,” said Igor with a guilty shrug. “You understand, nothing! You know, I probably fell in love for the first time in my life too. I had a wife once. I became an Other in 1945… I came back from the front, a young captain with a chest full of medals, and not a single scratch on me… and I’d been lucky in general. It was only later I realized it was my latent abilities as an Other that had kept me safe. And then I learned the truth about the Watches… It was a new war, you understand? And an absolutely just one, it couldn’t have been more just. I didn’t really know how to do anything except fight, and now I realized I’d found myself a job for life. For a very long life. And that I wouldn’t have to face any of those human afflictions and annoying illnesses, those lines for food… you can’t even imagine what perfectly ordinary hunger is like, Anton, what genuinely black bread tastes like, or genuinely bad vodka… what it feels like the first time you laugh in the fat, well-fed face of a special agent from SMERSH and yawn lazily in response to his question: “Why did you spend two months on enemy territory if the bridge was blown up on the third day after you parachuted in?”

Igor was beginning to get carried away now. He was speaking quickly and furiously… not at all the way the young magician from the Night Watch usually spoke…

“I came back and I looked at my Vilena, my little Lenochka-Vilenochka, so young and beautiful. She used to write me letters every day, honestly, and what letters they were! I saw how glad she was that I’d come back-I wasn’t hurt, I wasn’t crippled, and I was a hero as well. Very few women were so fortunate then. But she was very afraid that her envious bitches of neighbors would tell me about all the men she’d had during those four years, that my officer’s warrant wasn’t the only reason she’d been getting by quite comfortably… even now you don’t understand half of what I’m saying, do you? But I suddenly saw it. All of it at once. The longer I looked at her, the more I saw. All the details. And not only all her men-from lousy speculators to others like me, soldiers who hopped over the hospital fence and went absent without leave… And the way she whispered to one colonel, “He’s probably been rotting in the ground for ages…’-I heard that too… And by the way, that colonel turned out to be a real man. He got up off the bed, slapped her across the face, got dressed, and walked out.”