David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

Shadak was saved from his own thoughts by the OPEN sign in the town’s little restaurant. He stuck his head inside, and saw a thickset woman behind the counter. A coffee machine was sputtering in the corner. The woman looked up at him and said bonjour , and Shadak said bonjour back, but when he tried to order a light breakfast it developed that there was no cook; he had left with the others. Shadak could have coffee and some cereal, but there was no bread for toast. “Les pilgrims” had cleaned them out. On a hunch, Shadak asked her where they’d gone and the woman shrugged. “Away, thank God,” she said. Shadak thought about working her over — but truly, if he’d been in a frame of mind for working people over there was honest work for him in the marina. She poured him a cup of weak, strange-tasting coffee and he sat there at the counter in silence and thought about Afghanistan.

They were almost equals at first. In the two weeks it took for Shadak’s and Saunders’ people to coordinate the shipment of munitions and guards for it at the border rendezvous, Amar and Alexei got to know one another very well. They spent time in clubs — partied with the Mujahedeen staffers at Captain Musa’s villa outside Quetta. After only a little hesitation, Amar introduced Alexei to his girlfriend. Her name was Ming Lei. She was twenty-one years old and Shadak had met her at a club in Hong Kong, where she had been working as a dancer. She had implied several times that she was trying to gather enough money to smuggle her family out of the People’s Republic and this was the best way of earning it quickly. He trusted her, the way only a twenty-two year old can trust a beautiful woman who doesn’t answer questions directly.

“I want to bring her with us,” said Shadak at their favourite club, while Ming was off for a pee.

“To Kandahar?” Alexei appeared to consider it. Amar had expected him to do the sensible thing and tell him to fuck off. But then Alexei surprised him.

“Why not? She is good luck, yes?”

Amar blinked. “She is good luck.”

“Can she handle a gun?”

Amar laughed and stubbed out his cigarette in the little bronze ashtray at their table. “She doesn’t know about guns,” he said.

“That’s good,” said Alexei. “It never pays to love a woman who knows about guns.”

And they’d laughed. And Ming had come back, straightening her short skirt, and looked at them both. “What you laughing about? Crazy bastard?” She punched Amar hard in the arm. “What?”

Alexei propped his own cigarette in the crook of his smiling lips, and extended a hand across the table to Ming. She took it. “Congratulations, darling,” he shouted over the club’s booming techno-pop soundtrack. “Amar and I have voted on it.”

“What?”

“We’ve decided,” shouted Alexei.

Amar slid his arm around Ming’s ass.

“You’re coming to Kandahar!” he hollered. “With us!”

Ming laughed and nodded, and rubbed her hip deliciously against Amar’s shoulder. She seemed pleased enough at the time. Although later, Amar would learn that was because she hadn’t understood a word either of them had said over the din of the nightclub.

“You crazy?” she demanded later that night as they lay in bed. “Take a Chinese woman to Afghanistan? With luck I would be raped by Russian soldiers. No luck, and we meet Mujahideen? Who knows what would happen?”

“If you don’t — want to go, you don’t have to,” Amar stammered.

“Who is that kid you working with, anyway? This his idea?”

“No. It was mine.”

Ming faced him, hands on both his shoulders. She pretended to study his face. “You look all hurt. Aw. Don’t look hurt. Stupid idea, that’s all.”

They hadn’t spoken about it the rest of the night. But the next morning, when they met Alexei, Ming just nodded when he went over their travel itinerary. When Alexei left them, Amar asked her about it.

“So you’ve changed your mind? Do you want to come?”

Ming grinned and nodded. “Sure,” she said, infiltrating his fingers with her own and squeezing hard. “Big desert trip. Sound like fun.”

And that was all she would say about it, until they were at the border and pulling the tarps off the Red Cross trucks that his Calcutta contacts had moved in for him.

“Well well,” said a voice from the back of the restaurant, “another tourist. I thought we were done with them, eh, Marie?”

Shadak looked up. The man who’d come in was skinny as a rail, with cropped hair and a face rouged with exploded capillaries. As he worked his way closer to the counter, Shadak could smell liquor coming off him. Liquor and bile. He went past Shadak and set himself down at the end of the counter. The waitress, Marie, poured coffee into a cup and saucer and brought it to him.

“Good morning, Bill,” she said.

“You have had a lot of tourists?” asked Shadak.

Bill shook his head and belched. “Oh, a few,” he said.

“Where did they go?”

Bill looked at him wearily. “Jeez-us,” he said. “Not so loud. They went away in boats.”

Shadak looked at him. He smiled pleasantly. “You,” he said mildly, “know more than that.”

Bill sipped his coffee noisily, like soup. “I don’t know anythin’ anymore,” he said.

Shadak stood up and took the stool next to Bill.

“Took my boat, what they did,” he said. “No gratitude, isn’t that right, Marie?”

Marie smiled and shook her head. “They paid you,” she said.

“Where,” said Shadak, “did they take your boat?”

“No idea.”

Shadak picked up his coffee and sipped at it. He smacked his lips and turned to the waitress.

“ What’s that I’m tasting ?” he asked in French.

“ Salt ,” she said.

“ You are joking .”

“ It is a family secret. Takes away the bitterness .”

Shadak might have asked another question — but there was a jangling at the front door. Jack Devisi stepped in. “Fuck,” he said, “there you are. We been lookin’ all over for you. Fuckin’ harbourmaster lost—” Devisi stopped himself, seeing the two others in the diner “—lost his train of thought,” he finished.

Shadak nodded. He looked at the drunk. Studied his bleary eyes.

The drunk blinked and stared at him, suddenly alert. His eyes had a hungry glitter to them.

“ You aren’t a grandchild ,” he said. In Russian. “ You are close. But you are missing .”

“What the fuck,” gasped Devisi.

Shadak stepped back from the counter. Marie stepped back into the kitchen.

“Oh merde ,” she said.

Shadak smiled. Russian. This wasn’t old Bill talking. This was — who?

“Babushka?” said Shadak.

Bill’s face broke into a grin.

“ Where ,” said Shadak carefully in Russian, “ is Alexei Kilodovich ?”

“ I was hoping ,” said Bill, “ you could tell me .”

Then he faltered and grabbed the back of his chair. He settled himself into it.

“Wow,” Bill said, shaking his head.

“What the fuck?” said Devisi. “A Russian?”

Shadak looked around him. Devisi bent over the guy and slapped him. “Hey!” he said. “Fuckwit! What the fuck do you mean you could tell me? Where the fuck do we go! Answer me!”

Shadak was about to grab Devisi’s shoulder to make him stop when Marie appeared at the door to the kitchen.

“ We both want the same thing ,” she said in Russian.

“Ah, shit,” whispered Shadak. Then to Devisi: “Leave the old man alone. He has nothing to say to us.”

Bill was sobbing now. Marie, the waitress, touched her forehead and stumbled against the counter. She gasped. “I’m — sorry,” she said. “I didn’t say anything, did I?”