David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“What in fuck are you doing, Kilodovich?”

Alexei blinked. Ming blinked.

“What in fuck are you doing?”

“I saw a scorpion,” whispered Ming.

Alexei cleared his throat. “She thought she did,” he said. Ming’s hands folded on her lap. “You’re fine. Don’t worry.”

Beside Shadak, the driver waved out the window — returning a signal that neither of them had seen. He started the truck’s motor, threw it into gear — and the little caravan began a long circle across the valley — to the east, and the caves.

“This is a fuckup,” said Shadak angrily as the reddish dust rose into shafts of late-day sun in their wake, and the mortar-fire continued. “A complete fuckup.”

Three kilometres out, Alexei finally convinced Vladimir to leave the cab of the truck and follow at a distance. The conversation had pretty well died, and Alexei had been reduced to regarding his twitchy, gawky former self try and make it through the afternoon. What is it about youth , he wondered, that fits so poorly in its own skin ? Then he’d started to wonder whether he fit into his own skin any better now — and how it would be if he were to review his thirty-sixth year two decades hence. Would he seem the same slouching creep of a boy that he did to himself now? Every venality pasted to his forehead like a sign?

It hadn’t taken long before Vladimir announced he’d had enough of this recursive morosity. They stepped out of the cab — Alexei lowered Vladimir back into the pram — and they walked among the camels and transports as the convoy made its way through a narrow pass that twisted like a serpent, as it climbed higher into the eastern foothills.

“I don’t remember this part,” said Alexei.

“Really?” said Vladimir. “Here you are. Maybe you fell asleep and woke up in the nice cozy cave.”

Alexei shook his head. “I don’t remember waking up in a nice cozy cave,” he said. “You want to know what I remember?”

“Please,” said Vladimir.

“I remember this assignment. They sent me in to infiltrate the C.I.A. arms pipeline into Afghanistan. I established myself as a deserter from the Red Army in Pakistan, arranged it to be contacted by the CIA. Saunders was easy to trick. He set me up with that character Shadak. What a character he was!”

Alexei smiled to himself, as he thought about the weeks spent nightclubbing with Shadak, meeting up with his girlfriend Ming — insinuating himself in with them both — as the CIA stalled, running checks against his background and so forth. It was a good time: it was one of his first missions out of school. And in spite of the deception, he liked Shadak. Vladimir glared up at him. Alexei cleared his throat and went on.

“So we made the contact with the arms supplier, established the border crossing, arranged the drop-off. All the time, I sent back reports to the headquarters in Kabul. Things went very smoothly. Then—”

“Yes?”

“Then…” Alexei frowned. “Well, I couldn’t very well contact anyone once we were underway. But that was fine. The run into Afghanistan didn’t take very long. Although—”

“Yes, Kilodovich?”

“Although,” said Alexei finally, “it took longer than expected. I remember that. There were some complaints from Kabul. Oh, that was a bad month afterwards. I spent — how long in debriefing? A long time.” He shook his head. “So you see, there was none of this ambush and trek to the caves. I think that perhaps we are watching another fiction.”

“I see.” Vladimir clapped his hands over his head. “Another fiction. Let me ask you this, Kilodovich. How late were you in finally delivering the arms and reporting in?”

“It hardly matters—”

“How late?” Vladimir glared.

“I don’t see—” Alexei bent forward suddenly, a terrible pain lancing through his skull. “Ah! What the fuck was that for?”

“How late?” said Vladimir with real menace. “Tell, or I send another one your way.”

Alexei straightened and rubbed his temples, worked his jaw.

“Three weeks.” He frowned. “Three weeks?”

“No wonder they locked you up for a while when you finally reported in,” said Vladimir. “They must have thought you’d deserted.”

“What did I do,” said Alexei, standing still for a moment as a pair of camels insubstantial as a desert mirage passed around and through him, “for three weeks?”

The cave’s mouth was shaped like a scream. It was a wide scream — wide enough to admit the trucks and the camels into the shadows beneath its yellowish upper lip, the blunted teeth of rocks that littered its lower jaw. Beyond, the cave’s floor was flat enough that they could all stop there, safe in shadow but still near enough the entrance to make a hasty escape if need be.

Higher on the cliff-face there were various perches, good for sentries. Wali Beg handed his camel over to one of his brothers and, AK-47 in hand, clambered up to the lowest of these — an outcropping of red stone with a small, skeletal bush growing from the cracks. He vanished for a moment behind the rock, only emerging briefly to wave curtly to those below that he was safe. Then he was gone again.

Inside, the four trucks lined up behind one another. The men threw what camouflage they could over the truck nearest the cave mouth, and then began to unload the cargo. Shadak ordered the munitions taken deeper into the cave — the larger ones to a level plateau some forty metres inside; some of the smaller cases — which were in some circumstances more valuable — into what turned out to be a network of side tunnels, some of which were no wider than a thin man’s shoulders.

“We will reload the trucks,” he said, “when it is safe.”

Ahmed nodded. “It may be,” he said, “that we won’t reload the trucks at all. Tonight, I will send two men to the contact point. See what has become of our friends. If things have not gone well — this cargo may have to stay here for some time, until we can arrange another party.”

Shadak looked at him. “I don’t want to leave this untended,” he said.

“No need to,” said Ahmed. “This place is not unknown to us. We call it the Cistern. We have used it in the past as a — staging ground. We shall use it again perhaps. So there are provisions.”

Ahmed Jamal led Amar and Alexei and Ming Lei down one of the side tunnels they’d ignored — a narrow fold in the rock that seemed almost not to be there, unless one’s lamp were held just so, and one knew where to look. They had to bend forward and backward, and sharp stone scraped painfully across their backs and shoulders. But quickly, they emerged into what seemed like daylight.

Shadak laughed out loud at the sight of it. They weren’t outdoors precisely — but at the bottom of a twisting channel through the rock that dribbled sun through a high opening. The cave at the bottom was large — shaped like a letter “E” that had been tilted on its back to make three smaller cubbyholes.

In here were tidy stacks of crates — each one too large to move through the passage by which they entered.

“How—” began Shadak, looking at the crates.

Ahmed pointed to the sky. “We lowered them,” he said. “On a great winch that we then tossed down the hole and buried in the sand—” he pointed at a small mound toward the top left corner of the E “—there. They are not intended to be carried out again. They are to be consumed in this place. By men who need to hide.”

Ming Lei bent down and ran the sand on the cave’s floor through her fingers. “Like beach,” she said. “But no water.”