Dale Brown - Puppet Master

“Isn’t it kind of soon for a job?”

“Take me to him. Please.”

The air inside the building smelled like pulverized brick, as if the façade had been ground into tiny particles and was now being sent through the ventilating system: an impossibility, given not only the lack of such a system in the structure, but anything resembling a roof. There was no electricity either, and nothing that it could have powered; Tolevi followed the path of his captor’s flashlight as he was marched to a crate at the back corner of a building a block from the butcher’s. The nearby floor was littered with rags and shoes. He kicked one as he walked, and something rolled out from under the pile; it was a syringe.

It took him a few moments to realize the building had been used as a makeshift hospital.

“What is your name?” asked the man with the gun when Tolevi sat down. So far the men had done nothing physical to him, barely even threatening him, really.

No doubt that wasn’t going to last.

“Gabor Tolevi.”

“Why were you at the butcher’s?” asked the man with the gun again.

“Stew meat,” said Tolevi.

Against all logic, he hoped for the reply that would show the man was his contact. Instead he got a slap across the face.

“Why are you here?”

“I am in the import business,” said Tolevi. “I sell things at wholesale and—”

Another slap, but this one was with the butt of the AK. Tolevi tumbled to the floor, jaw broken.

“You will tell me why you are here, Russian,” demanded the man. “No more games!”

Before Tolevi could think of an answer, the room exploded. He felt himself being thrown backward into an abyss, the world vanishing beneath him.

Louis Massina was on top of the world, and he was falling, sliding, unable to stop, unable to save himself.

God, he prayed, if it’s your will to let me die…

The prayer died on his lips.

If it’s God’s will, the nuns all taught, so be it.

So be it.

No way. No.

The bastard’s going to kill me, and there’s so much more I have to do. I cannot die now. No. I am not going to die.

“God,” he said aloud, voice trembling, “if it’s your will that I die, screw it, because I’m not going, not without a fight.”

Tolevi rolled on the floor as the room exploded, covering his head with his arms. The flash of light had left him temporarily blinded; the loud boom made him deaf.

He thought about Borya back home. He was supposed to call her tonight at 5:00 p.m. her time.

Not going to make that.

He tried to crawl out of the confusion, unsure where he was going but believing movement would save him. Air rushed past and the ground rumbled; he heard something in the distance, a metallic rattle, then a softer but stranger sound, a thin sheet of aluminum foil being torn in two. Grit slammed into his face. He started to cough and pushed harder, dragging his legs across rubble, knowing that he had to get away, knowing that he would get away, but not sure what he had to get through to escape.

Then he was lifted, flying in the air.

Tolevi’s eyes felt glued shut. He started to cough again. The gunfire became louder. He became aware of the sides of his head pressing against the soft parts of his brain. He could feel his skull from the inside, could feel the bones as if they were a helmet pressing around his entire being.

I’m flying.

He moved his hands to pry his eyes open, but the lids wouldn’t budge.

A rush of cold air against his face. He opened his mouth and gulped. It smelled of the night, damp, thick with exhaust.

Someone called to him from the distance. Lights were moving nearby.

A car?

He fell onto something hard. The side of his face brushed along metal.

He was in a car or a truck, on the floor. They were moving. A voice floated over him in a language he couldn’t make out.

“You’re lucky they didn’t kill you.”

Russian. It was Russian.

“Da,” he mumbled, answering his own thought, not the voice. It continued, strengthening in tone, starting to become coherent. It was asking him questions, asking him why he had gone in there, what the wolves had wanted.

Volki. Wolves.

Not a question about whether he was OK.

Which should tell him something, should identify who he was with, but it didn’t.

Other voices, speaking Russian.

Two hands took hold of Tolevi from the back and hauled him upward, pushing him around so that he was sitting back to the wall of the vehicle. Water slopped over his face. Shaking his head, Tolevi reached his hands to his eyes and rubbed them.

He blinked; a flashlight shone on his face.

“Why were you with the criminals?” asked the voice. It belonged to a man in a black combat uniform, kneeling next to him. He was wearing a black watch cap with a ninja-style mask that covered his face.

They were in the back of a cargo van. Besides the man talking to him, there was another nearby, to his right. He, too, was wearing a mask. He was also holding an assault rifle — not an old Kalashnikov, like the man who’d stopped him on the street, but something newer, an AK-74 maybe, though Tolevi wasn’t sure. There were two men in the front of the truck; he could see their heads.

“Why are you in the People’s Republic?” asked the man next to him.

“Business,” mumbled Tolevi.

“With the criminal government?”

Tolevi struggled to clear his head. The man’s Russian had an accent that he couldn’t quite pick out, but he wasn’t Ukrainian.

Special operations troops helping the rebels. Spetsnaz.

Or not. They could be anyone, on any side.

You’ll never see Borya again.

“Where did you get these papers?” asked the man, holding them out.

“Checkpoint,” said one of the men in front.

The man who’d been questioning him stopped talking and moved to the other side of the van. But clearly they weren’t worried about being stopped: they slowed, the driver opened the window, and then they sped past.

A few minutes later they stopped at the rear of a large house. Tolevi was led out of the truck, not gently but not roughly either, and walked to the back door. Other vans pulled up as they walked, driving past to a barnlike building fifty or so meters away.

Inside, his escort pointed to a chair in the hallway and told him to wait. Tolevi sat down, scanning his surroundings. Oil paintings lined the walls, and the two lights he saw were small chandeliers, their chiseled crystals reflecting kaleidoscopically with a shimmer of bright white and tiny rainbow triangles.

There were more people inside, many of them.

I can probably walk out of here without anyone noticing, Tolevi thought. But where would I go?

Best to play along and see where this leads.

It was impossible to be in Tolevi’s business and not encounter difficult situations. He’d dealt with police and customs agents in Russia, the Ukraine, Poland, and Georgia; South America and Mexico. Most were surprisingly civil, more businesslike and less aggressive than the average traffic cop in the States. And these men, though clearly military, were far to the professional side of the spectrum. They weren’t treating him like a prisoner, really — no harsh pushes, no gruff language.

Yet, anyway. So hopefully things would go well here.

If not…