Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

Dobrev opened the door. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Me?’ the skinhead screamed. ‘What are you doing with that foreigner — besides disrespecting the memory of your grandson? You know how he felt about Chinks.’

‘You’re drunk, Marko. Go home before I call the police.’

Kadurik looked past Dobrev. ‘I’ll go home when she goes home — back to China!’

‘I won’t have this,’ Dobrev shouted.

‘Have what? The truth? Yury loved you, and you piss on his ideals with this filth!’

Filled with anger and embarrassment, Dobrev slapped the young man across the face with a meaty hand. In the narrow hallway, the sound of his palm hitting the young man’s cheek was like a pistol shot. The young man staggered, more from shock than pain.

Kadurik stared at Dobrev, who stared right back.

‘You may think you knew my grandson,’ Dobrev said slowly, ‘but you only knew the monster he became, not the promising young man that he once was. You, and your kind, and your unspeakable behavior — there is no excuse for you.’ Dobrev’s eyes burned with rage. ‘Leave. Now . While the only injury is to the respect of my guest.’

‘Your whore, you mean.’

Dobrev went to slap him again. This time the young man was ready. He pushed the old man back so the blow fell short. Then he shouldered past him.

‘We don’t want your kind in our country!’ the punk yelled as he approached Jasmine. He put his right hand in his jacket pocket as he circled around her. He used profanity so offensive that she wasn’t familiar with the terms. But Dobrev was.

‘Enough!’ the old man boomed.

Dobrev started toward him again, but the young man turned, revealing a fist that was now fitted with hard, black plastic knuckles.

‘Don’t even think about touching me again!’ Kadurik yelled.

‘Take those off, and never come here again,’ Dobrev said coolly. ‘Your kind is unwelcome in my home.’

‘ My kind? ‘ He sneered toward Jasmine. ‘You welcome this trash but you insult me ? Our language itself is profaned coming from her filthy mouth!’

Jasmine maintained a neutral expression. Her hands rested at her sides as the angry young man stared at her with blazing eyes. Loathing crushed whatever lust a normal young man would have felt. That was a new feeling for Jasmine — to be hated for her race rather than wanted for her beauty. Fear expanded like a balloon inside her chest and stomach. Her sensei had told her not to run from that feeling but to accept it. To ride it. To use it to her advantage.

Don’t let it distract you from what must be done to survive.

Mentally she knew she had command of the skill set that he had given her. But she had never had to test herself in the field. It was very different to be in a strange, dark room instead of in a bright gym with cushioned mats.

The anger was different, too.

This punk looked as if he wanted to tear her head off.

He is looking down , she told herself. He is a coward — a brute. That’s why he put that thing on his hand to fight an older man and a woman. He is afraid .

She straightened to her full height. Not swiftly but slowly, in total control. She did not take her eyes from him. She did not assume a stance. She just — stood.

Their eyes were level now, but they were not equal. She was confident and poised. He was angry and unsure. She knew exactly what she would do if she had to. She knew, from his action, which hand would come at her and that it would be with a hooked swing. She had already scoped out her immediate surroundings using peripheral vision. The first lesson she had learned from her sensei: get out of the way. Let your attacker move past you with wild momentum. Then attack from behind.

Her resolve was apparent. His uncertainty was equally obvious … even to him. After a moment or two more of alpha-dog huffing, he clamped his mouth shut, spun away, and left the apartment — slamming the door behind him.

The rage hung in the room for a few moments, then it evaporated. As it did, Jasmine saw Dobrev racked with shame.

‘I am so sorry,’ he said miserably.

‘There’s no need.’

‘I’m ashamed,’ he repeated, turning away slightly. ‘So ashamed.’

She let him have a moment. Jasmine did not know if Dobrev knew it, but those were reportedly the very words Nicholas II said to Alexandra after he was forced to abdicate.

When he looked at her again, his face was regretful. ‘My grandson, Yury … he held so much promise. He was named for Yury Lomonosov, the designer of the first diesel locomotive. His father thought that he would take after him. But it was not to be.’

Jasmine was cautious, but she couldn’t help herself. She took a few steps toward the man and placed a hand on his shoulder, letting him know that she, and the situation, were all right.

She knew from what Garcia had researched and whispered in her ear that the young man’s father, Andrei’s son, was Ivan Dobrev. Newspaper accounts and police reports said that Ivan had been a proud railroad man during the industry’s most trying time in the 1990s. Yury had been just a baby when the Russian mob, competing with the dying Soviet government for control of the railway workers, had opened fire on a picnic in the Lyubertsy neighborhood just outside Moscow city limits. Yury had survived the slaughter. His father did not.

‘My son was a good man,’ Dobrev said sadly, succinctly. ‘He was killed in an unfortunate incident. His mother, Dominika, lingered — but as you can imagine, she was never the same. She drank to bury her pain. She couldn’t control Yury, even when he was a child. I tried, but I was around infrequently. I found her dead one morning when Yury was eleven. We never did discover whether she simply gave up or committed suicide with the bottle. Yury was sitting by her side, reading a book about the Revolution. I can still see the cover, February and October -’

Jasmine nodded. ‘The abdication of the tsar, and then the rise of the Bolsheviks.’

‘That’s right,’ Dobrev said admiringly. ‘After the ambulance came, and the police, I asked the boy to join me at the rail yards. He didn’t answer. I referenced the book. I told him that in spite of everything that had happened, he was lucky not to have to live through the time of hunger and change. I told him how we had to work with military tanks in the streets, gunfire in our ears, and the smell of acrid smoke in our nostrils. He listened, looked at me for a moment … then he spit at me.’

Jasmine made a sympathetic sound in spite of herself. ‘He was just eleven?’

Dobrev nodded. ‘I didn’t strike him. I grasped him tightly by the arms and asked him why he had done that. He said that my trains had caused the trouble. Ease of travel from foreign countries. The influence of foreign culture and values. He blamed that on men like me.’

‘Where did that come from?’ Jasmine asked.

‘The RNU.’

Cobb whispered in her ear. ‘The Russian National Unity Group. Russian Nazis. Mainly young punks who embrace the label because they think it’s cool … By the way, we’re outside. Cough if you need us.’

‘Russian Nazis,’ Jasmine said.

Dobrev nodded. ‘They recruit young boys to program with their mindless fervor. Yury kept getting angrier and angrier. When I saw him, which wasn’t often, his talk was increasingly spiteful and sadistic. It was this behavior that took him from me.’

‘What happened?’ Jasmine asked. She was speaking to both her immediate company and those listening on their closed frequency.

Garcia pounded his keyboard, frantically searching the Web for anything related to Yury Dobrev. ‘I’ve got nothing,’ he answered.