Paul Vidich - The Mercenary

“Any chance you know the time?” the man asked.

“It’s past midnight.”

“Finally.”

Garin met GAMBIT’s eyes. The two men took each other in, cautious, tentatively curious. Strangers joined by conspiracy.

“Who was she?” GAMBIT asked.

“A grieving woman. She couldn’t take a hint.”

GAMBIT grunted. “This place isn’t safe now.” Quiet for a moment. His eyes darted between the marble mausoleums. “Come,” he said. He directed Garin toward the exit. “You plan for everything, but you can’t count on bad luck. I have another spot. We can talk without an audience.” He nodded at Zyuganov’s grave. “My wife’s idea to meet here. She said no one would guess.” He paused. “You’re alone?”

“Yes.”

“Surveillance?”

“I lost them in Arbatskaya Metro Station.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“So it was only her?”

“Are you worried about her?”

“I worry about whatever I want to worry about. We’ll take my car.”

BLISTERING COLD MADE IT AN afternoon like many others in February. GAMBIT had made Garin wait behind a palomino on the merry-go-round, and he waited an ungodly amount of time for GAMBIT to return from the park’s administrative office, closed for the winter except for two guards who had put on large winter coats at GAMBIT’s direction. They took the bottle of port GAMBIT held out.

“Hurry up,” GAMBIT said, ushering them out the door. “She’ll be here any minute. Your two ugly faces will scare her off.”

Garin watched the two men disappear behind the rusting Ferris wheel, idled like a junkyard memory, and emerged when GAMBIT waved him forward.

“Friends from my hometown,” he said. “Quick. Inside.” He closed the door, and Garin found himself in a spare room with a small woodstove, empty shelves, a table made of plywood, and one small, dirty window that provided the room’s only light. Red-hot coals warmed the room.

“I give them a bottle, and they go away for a few hours so I can meet my girlfriend. It’s good they didn’t see you. They’d suspect I was goluboy .” Queer. GAMBIT shrugged. “Married fifteen years. I’ve never cheated once, but it’s guys like me that those two would think, yes, it’s possible, he’s a deviant. Vlad, the older one with the limp and a pig’s nose, is a distant cousin. The other one, Alexei, is smarter. Hates the Party, hates anyone from Moscow. He’s a muzhik , like me, but I’m a KGB lieutenant colonel and he’s a muzhik guard at Sokolniki Amusement Park. He is smarter than me in all ways but one—he never learned to keep his mouth shut and his opinions to himself.”

GAMBIT removed his bulky overcoat for the heat of the stove. His first question cut short any further small talk. “Vodka or whiskey?”

“Vodka.”

“Good.” GAMBIT pulled a bottle from the cupboard and placed it on the plywood table with two glasses. Then he laid out a package of brown waxed paper, which he proceeded to unwrap, revealing a selection of cured meats. He removed a loaf of black bread from a cloth bag.

“ Zakuski ,” he said. “Talking is better if we eat and drink first. There’s blood sausage, pig’s knuckles, smoked white fish. I told them to leave it. I said I needed something tasty for the girlfriend.”

GAMBIT cut a slice with his pocketknife and carried the morsel to his mouth on the blade, all the while keeping his eyes on Garin. “So, who are you?”

“An American.”

“The hell you are. Your accent. A deserter or a refugee. Those guys are all nashi. Native Russian speakers are all collaborators.”

Garin took a slice GAMBIT offered on his blade. “Who do you think I am?”

“You look Russian, but you don’t act like a Russian. What I can’t figure out is how you learned Russian.”

“One day I’ll tell you.”

GAMBIT laughed. “You’re an émigré. That’s my guess. Taken out as a child by nervous bourgeois parents. How old are you? Forty-five?” He pondered Garin. “Forty?”

Garin ignored GAMBIT’s speculation, saying his age didn’t matter, and eventually GAMBIT tired of the silence. He laid his knife on the plywood. “What happened to the other who was taken on Red Square?”

“Expelled.”

“I heard the rumors inside the directorate. It was too close. I could smell the shit in his pants. They were waiting for him. Where is he?”

“Don’t worry about him. I’m the only one you’ll be dealing with.” He looked at GAMBIT. “You requested me?”

“I asked for the one who lost Zyuganov.” GAMBIT made a generous pour of vodka and raised his glass, but he stopped, hesitating at the point where his lips tasted the liquor. “So you’re him?” He threw back the drink and poured a second glass.

“Yes.”

GAMBIT raised his glass in a toast. “ Na zdorovye .” To your health. “We’ll need it.”

Garin emptied his glass, recognizing the metallic taste of local alcohol, and he went drink for drink on his way to establishing trust during their first meeting. “So,” he said, “why me?”

“Why you?” GAMBIT smiled a self-satisfied smile, like a cat who had cornered a mouse. “Why a man who failed General Zyuganov? You must know he was executed.” GAMBIT’s finger rose to the nape of his neck. “He was shot in a basement cell in Lubyanka. Made to kneel, head forward. One bullet. Yes, why a man responsible for that?”

GAMBIT judged Garin. “It doesn’t make sense from your point of view, but if you are me, the thing that makes no sense is to put my life in the hands of a new man with no experience who only wants to advance his career. For him, failure is expulsion and a long flight home. For me—and for you—it’s our lives. KGB officers don’t survive two failures, and I think the CIA is the same. We both succeed, or we both fail. I trust a man who has as much to lose as I do. You are such a man. Am I right?” GAMBIT waited for an answer, but when he didn’t get one, he added, “I see doubt in your eyes. You think I’m playing you. If that were true, the KGB would be at the door already.”

Garin felt the workings of a self-conscious intelligence that could easily be mistaken for an amateur. In their roles, he was the handler, but he felt himself being handled. It didn’t matter if GAMBIT was wrong because there was no going back.

Garin slowly poured himself another drink, watching the clear alcohol rise in his glass, and lifted it in a toast. “ Za vashe zdorovye .”

“We should introduce ourselves,” GAMBIT said. “What’s your name?”

Garin slid his laminated identity card across the table: name, recent photograph, title. GAMBIT looked at it and then slid his own card across the table. “Take a good look. It’s as phony as yours. At least the idiots who created yours didn’t name you Lenin.”

“Okay,” Garin said, taking back his card. “Then who the hell are you?”

“First business. I want the camera, radio, and money I was promised.”

Garin removed a cloth bag from his overcoat’s pocket and placed it on the table. He knew that when money entered the conversation, it was likely that money was GAMBIT’s motive, no matter how much political gloss he daubed on his reasons for working with the CIA. It was a sort of fraternity between them. Money served many purposes, established understanding, and each man had his own reasons for wanting it. He stared at GAMBIT counting the stack of rubles, flicking the bills with his wetted finger.

“I asked for two hundred thousand. This is shit.” He pushed the money back. “You think I’m joking.”

“Why so much? Where would you spend it?” Garin had objected to Rositske, who had insisted on cutting GAMBIT’s down payment in half to keep him on a short leash.