David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

Stephen returned to the main phone and picked up the telephone. It rang twice at the main desk before Richard answered.

“Ye-e-es sir?”

“Richard,” said Stephen, “we’ve got a situation here. Send up Miles immediately.”

“Muh-iles? Isn’t he-e up there a-lready?”

“No,” said Stephen, “he’s not. He didn’t—”

—didn’t make it.

Stephen mentally kicked himself. Of course he didn’t make it. Miles had been shadowing Mrs. Kontos-Wu. Mrs. Kontos-Wu had a dream-walker in her. A dream-walker who was no doubt expecting a shadow.

Stephen glared over at the bed. Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyes were open, and whoever it was behind them glared back.

“All right Richard,” said Stephen, “you’re going to have to come up here yourself. It’s an emergency.”

“Sir — I-I ca-an’t leave—”

“An emergency ,” Stephen repeated. “I need you up here — now!”

He hung up the phone without waiting for a reply. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” Stephen crossed the room to the bedside. “What the fuck did you do with Miles!” Stephen shouted. “You fucking killed him, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu blinked and smiled a little.

“Well fuck you, whoever you are!” Stephen could feel his eyes heating up. Tears were starting. “Fuck you! Get the fuck out of her! You got nothing to do here, all right? Get out!”

Stephen wanted to punch her again, but as he raised his hand to do so, he saw the smile broaden.

“Go ahead,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu in thickly accented English. Stephen lowered his hand. He would only be hitting Mrs. Kontos-Wu, he knew. Whoever it was that was dream-walking her wouldn’t even feel a sting.

“Baba Yaga,” he said. “Manka.”

“Vasil-issa,” finished Mrs. Kontos-Wu. Her mouth enveloped the word like it was melting chocolate. “Baba Yaga. Manka. Vasilissa. Funny words.”

Stephen moved to the foot of the bed. He felt like that guy in The Exorcist — the priest with faith problems facing down the devil in the little girl, with the Exorcist himself dead in the other room. Stephen wasn’t in the same situation exactly — he was no doubter where dream-walking was concerned, and Fyodor Kolyokov was no Exorcist.

He also had more to worry about than driving the Devil out of Mrs. Kontos-Wu. There was the matter of Kolyokov in the bathroom —

— and the ringing telephone.

Stephen snatched it from its cradle. “Richard!” he snapped. “What the fuck did I tell you? Upstairs!”

“What is upstairs?”

Stephen’s blood turned to ice. It wasn’t Richard on the other end of the line. It was the call he’d been dreading most of the day.

Amar Shadak.

“Stephen? Have I caught you at a bad time?”

Stephen took a breath and forced his voice to modulate. The world may be collapsing, but Stephen couldn’t afford to let Shadak in on that little morsel of information. Just because he was across an ocean and a third of a continent further didn’t make Amar Shadak any less dangerous.

“No. Things are fine, Amar.” The line was secure, but Shadak insisted on keeping things on a first-name basis anyway.

“I am pleased to hear that things are fine, Stephen. Very pleased.” Shadak cleared his throat. “I was wondering if I might speak with Fyodor? Is he available just now?”

Shit. Stephen glanced at the bathroom door, took a breath.

“Unfortunately, no. He’s not available just now.”

“In a meeting is he?” Shadak laughed mirthlessly. “I think he can speak with me. We’ve an urgent matter to discuss.”

Stephen took a breath. Shit shit shit . “I don’t, ah—”

“Why Stephen,” said Shadak, his voice taking on a tone, at once edged like a butterfly knife and soft as honey. “You’re hiding something from me. Something’s got you so scared, you’re hiding something from me. Fyodor’s not in a meeting, is he?”

Stephen didn’t answer. Something was up — something that included Mrs. Kontos-Wu, Kolyokov’s death, the thing that Kolyokov was investigating — the anomaly at the yacht. It was something that also evidently included Shadak. What was it? Stephen still had no idea — so kept his mouth shut.

“I think,” said Shadak after a second, “that there are two possibilities here. Either he is dead, or he is fucking me.”

When it was clear that Stephen wasn’t going to bite, Shadak continued. He was rolling now, relishing his big-time-player-versus-nervous-executive-assistant gambit. “Either possibility explains this nervous little bum-boy I’m talking to now. He’s got a corpse in the hotel room, and he doesn’t have a fucking idea how to tell this to Fyodor’s honest business associates and not fuck things up. If that’s what’s happened, I understand.

“But I’m afraid it’s not that at all. I’m afraid that Fyodor is fucking me. And I’m afraid that you are in on it, little bum-boy.”

Until now, Shadak’s voice had been the deep, confidence-inspiring rumble that Stephen had come to recognize in their telephone sparring matches over the years. But as he continued, his voice grew louder and more shrill. And as this happened, a peculiar calm came over Stephen.

So what if Mrs. Kontos-Wu was tied up on the bed making like Linda Blair? So what if Fyodor Kolyokov was dead in the isolation tank, which was so full of piss and shit it would take a Home Depot full of cleaning products to make it right again? So what if Miles was bleeding in some corner of the hotel and Stephen’s only prospect for some help was a 63-year-old computer engineer good for nothing but manning the front desk at Kolyokov’s hotel? And yeah, so what if Amar Shadak — the cool fucker from eastern Turkey who normally played Stephen like a mandolin — was so freaked out about something he was ready to scream?

In this sea of calamity, Stephen would be the one signpost of serenity and control. He thought back to the tapes he’d purchased from the psychic fair. The telephone mind-reading trick.

Stephen cleared his throat.

“Amar,” he said, “would you stop talking for a moment?”

As he said the words, Stephen imagined himself climbing the spiral staircase inside the wire of Amar Shadak’s telephone. He got to the metaphorical door to his brain, and metaphorically booted it in. He turned on the two TV screens behind Shadak’s eyes.

“Fuck you, you little piece of shit!”

Stephen opened his eyes. This really worked best with a cooperative subject —

“—the fuck did you do with my boat? And my 641! You used your fucking tricks to send a fucking torpedo! My people are killed!”

— but a cooperative subject isn’t always available. Sometimes, you have to learn to make do with what’s at hand. He shut his eyes, and willed the words away.

It seemed to work. He ran up the spiral stairs, pushed open the door once more, turned on the television screens and looked —

At mountains. Shadak was operating out of an old caravansary he’d remodelled near Silifke these days. It was older than Jesus, as Kolyokov liked to say. Now it had electricity and running water and floors redone in fine Italian tile, and an army of Romanian mercenaries who ran the thing like Castle Dracula.

It’s working .

In the background, he could hear the muffled noise of a diesel engine, and a voice. Stephen leaned forward, to better hear. “—Hzekul’s dead? I think you fucking KILLED HIM YOU FUCKING LITTLE—”

The voice quickly mutated into a high-pitched yowl, and as the pitch rose higher, the television screens exploded into prismatic fire.

Whoa. Feedback .

Stephen blinked and sat up. The phone was on the floor beside him. The back of his head was sore, but not from any impact.