David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Feedback,” he said wonderingly. The combination of his words over the telephone and the words coming from Amar Shadak’s head had created a feedback loop that had blown Stephen’s empathic link like a cheap pair of bookshelf speakers.

Stephen picked up the phone. Shadak had hung up. Stephen wondered if the feedback had hit him in the same way.

And what , Stephen wondered, did he mean by torpedo?

Before Stephen could wonder any more, the hotel room door swung open. Richard stepped in. To Stephen’s relief, Miles followed. He was limping, with a bright red handkerchief pressed against his forehead, the handkerchief matching the bloody red blotches on his shirt. From the cast of his eye, he was pissed off beyond belief. But he wasn’t dead.

“That’s the bitch,” he said as soon as he stepped in the room. He limped menacingly toward Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “Let me go to work on her.”

“No,” said Stephen. “That’s not why you’re here.”

Richard gave Stephen a helpless look. He brushed a long white strand of hair from his eyes. “You-ou said the-ere was an emergency, sir?”

“Right,” said Stephen. “Mr. Kolyokov has… taken ill. I need the two of you to help me remove him from the tank and get him to the infirmary.”

Richard sniffed the air — no doubt he was smelling the stink of the tank, which had now wafted out from the bathroom.

“Shou-ouldn’t we perhaps call an ambulance?”

Miles and Stephen shared a look. Poor, brainwashed Richard — he really did think he was a desk clerk in a Manhattan hotel, and that the reasonable thing to do when Fyodor Kolyokov fell ill was to ship him off to the Sisters of Mercy in a city-run ambulance.

“Ah, no Richard,” said Stephen. “The infirmary will be fine.”

Miles gestured to Mrs. Kontos-Wu, who was grinning malevolently at him. “You want me to call housekeeping then?” he said.

“Not housekeeping,” said Stephen. When a death was involved, the Emissary’s housekeeping crew consisted of a tightly knit Croat family, with a cart full of sulphuric acid and a bone saw. “But you might want to call a maid up here once we’ve got Mr. Kolyokov downstairs.”

Miles raised his eyebrows in a question.

“The tank,” said Stephen. “I’m not getting in that thing until somebody gives it a good cleaning.”

As far as Holden Gibson was concerned, Alexei Kilodovich was a big hero. He was, Holden said, the kind of guy Holden wished he had twenty of: “A guy who sees a bullet coming and gets in the way of it. No ifs ands or buts: he doesn’t waste time figuring the percentages, sussing the odds. Just steps right in the way. Without even thinking.”

Alexei, of course, had done nothing so heroic as taking a bullet for Holden Gibson. He had simply pushed Holden Gibson over, an instant after deciding to postpone his murder — while not far off an old Russian torpedo hit a yacht and blew it up.

But to Holden Gibson’s way of thinking, that was enough. So far as he was concerned, the torpedo explosion was immense — just shy of thermonuclear in scope, sending tons of razor sharp debris whizzing through the air at about neck height, aiming for Holden Gibson. When Alexei tackled him, he had saved him from untold mayhem. So Holden Gibson imprinted on Alexei, in the manner of an orphan duckling imprinting on a passing turkey vulture. Alexei had never felt so complete a piece of shit as he did the moment he climbed on board Holden’s motor yacht.

“You could take a lesson from Mister Fuckin’ KGB here,” Holden told Heather as she climbed up the ladder from her own raft.

Heather rolled her eyes to indicate the half-dozen small children in the raft below her. Language , she mouthed.

“Oh. Right.” Holden nodded. “But you get what I mean.”

“Oh yes,” she said. When Holden turned away from her, she shot Alexei a look more venomous than all previous looks combined.

Five of the crew-members had gathered around the rope ladders to help hoist the children on board. There were a few children too small to use the rungs and they had to be passed up by hand. And the ones who were big enough were slow and timid as children can be. Finally, the last of them were on board and the Romanians cast off.

“Good riddance,” muttered Holden. “Those fuckers gave me the creeps.”

Alexei shrugged.

“Well—” Holden turned to Heather “—the sooner we get these little darlins locked up below decks, the sooner we can go home.”

“Right,” said Heather. Out of Holden’s sight, Alexei nodded glumly.

Of course. The children would be locked below in Holden Gibson’s smuggler’s hold, and they would all return to the United States where Holden would put the children into what amounted to criminal slavery, playing out some elaborate magazine sales scam in the far-off lands of Ottawa and Mississauga.

That’s right — that was why Alexei had decided to kill Holden Gibson. Because he was an evil son-of-a-bitch bastard who exploited little children. In the pit of self-flagellating misery he’d made for himself, Alexei spotted a darker corner still and headed for it.

Meanwhile, Heather had put on her game face — a vapidly happy grin topped with wide, sparkling eyes that was probably her idea of how a kindergarten teacher looked.

“All right children,” she said, “who wants to have a little nap?”

“No time for napping,” chirped a little voice from their midst. A chorus of other voices murmured assent.

“Well,” said Heather, “we’re going to have to go downstairs anyway. So come on—” she clapped her hands merrily “—let’s all go!”

She started for the door into the lounge, but stopped when the children didn’t follow. They stared at her wordlessly.

A silence had fallen onto the ship — the only sound was the blustering sea wind and the low thrum of the engines under their feet.

Heather’s game face started to crack.

“Come on.” She said it in the kind of voice that would send a kindergarten class into spasms of tears. “Let’s move it, gang!”

“No,” chirped the little voice. “Let’s not.”

The children looked down to their feet then, and slowly moved apart to make way for the speaker.

Alexei’s eyes widened. “Holy fuck,” whispered someone nearby.

The speaker was an infant — not much more than five months outside the womb, if Alexei were any judge. It wore a little blue jumper — so Alexei guessed it to be male — and had a gossamer-thin curl of black hair, the same colour as the rest.

He crawled forward on his hands and knees, and stopped in front of Heather.

“We are not going downstairs. I have had my nap already today. The rest of the brothers and sisters are likewise well rested. I think instead we will go up to visit your pilot. We have more brothers and sisters to collect before we do anything else.”

Holden’s crew stared slack-jawed at the marvel of the baby’s impossible speech. Holden himself lumbered over and lowered himself to his haunches.

“Well look at you,” he said. “She wasn’t kidding when she said you were special.”

“P-pretty fucking special,” said Heather. “This is impossible. Somebody’s playing a trick. Babies can’t talk — their mouths… aren’t well enough developed.”

Holden’s eyes narrowed. “Good point,” he said.

“It is,” said the baby. “Do you see me using my mouth?”

The baby’s lips were pursed shut as he spoke.

Holden grinned then. “Of course not. Because one of you other kids is doing a ventriloquist trick, isn’t that right?” He laughed and stood up. “Which one? Let me see you. We can always use someone who can throw their voice. Which one’s lucky?”