David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Ste-Stephen? That you?”

Stephen shrugged on a bathrobe and opened the bathroom door. Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked at him from the bed. Her eyes were wide and wet with tears. Terrified. Which was interesting: it was the first spark of humanity in her that Stephen had detected since she’d returned. And the accent was gone.

Maybe , he thought, the dream-walker’s gone too.

Or it could be a trick — like those scenes in The Exorcist where Linda Blair seems okay for a second, to trick the priests to come in close enough so the devil can let loose another green puke whammy and knock them out the window to their deaths.

“It’s me,” he said carefully. “Yeah.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu glanced down at the straps. “What’s with these things?” she said. “Can you undo them?”

“I don’t think so,” said Stephen — Can you undo them ? being one of the first things a tricky dream-walker would ask once he’d gotten the knack of humanizing his host.

The door to the suite opened then, and Miles stepped in. He was carrying a Glock at chest height. He gave Stephen a pissed-off look; Stephen had sent him from the suite an hour ago, on the theory that security man’s aura was what was fucking up his dream-walking. Miles had argued — he didn’t trust the straps where Mrs. Kontos-Wu was concerned, and thought Stephen was taking a foolish risk leaving her unguarded while he “sloshed around in Mr. Kolyokov’s tank.”

Stephen had a hard time looking Miles in the eye now. He’d responded by pointing out that he was the dream-walker, Miles was the goon, and while Miles might have nothing better to do in a tank than “slosh around,” Stephen had the capacity to use the tank to its full advantage.

Except that it hadn’t exactly turned out that way. Stephen had spent the last three hours using every trick in the book, several on tape and even a couple he’d picked up off the Internet. And try as he might, he hadn’t been able to invoke even a hint of the dream-walking state that Kolyokov entered so effortlessly in the tank.

“Is everything under control, sir?” said Miles, in a tone that made Stephen want to hit him.

“The straps are holding,” said Stephen. “If that’s what you mean.”

Miles lowered his handgun. He regarded Mrs. Kontos-Wu, and she frowned back at him.

“Miles — Shute. Right?”

Miles nodded warily. Her eyes tracked him as he stepped around the bed, and settled on the bandage on his scalp. “What happened to your head?” she asked.

“Is this for real?” said Miles to Stephen.

“Not sure. She’s doing a good impression of herself. But who knows?”

“Why,” said Miles, “don’t you just get back in the tank and check for yourself? Dream-walk into her. That’s your knack — right, Stephen?”

Stephen looked away, out the window. It was late afternoon in New York City. Central Park was a long vertical sliver of gold-hazed greenery. Stephen couldn’t imagine what the park was like to either side of the sliver. All he saw now was two ugly old water towers, and below that, deep red brick, drawn curtains and the black cross-hatch of fire escapes. It was a shitty view, and there wasn’t anything he could do to change that.

“Who knows?” said Stephen.

“How is Mr. Kolyokov?” asked Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “He said he might be injured — maybe in a coma?”

Miles raised both eyebrows and scrunched his lips. Stephen looked over to Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “‘He said’? You’ve been talking with Fyodor?”

“Look — Stephen. Cut the shit. Undo the straps.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu threw him a full-teeth smile. “What am I going to do? Kill ya with my hands?”

“Wouldn’t put it past you,” said Miles. “Don’t untie her.”

“You don’t have to tell me that,” Stephen answered. He turned back to Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “If our positions were reversed, you wouldn’t untie me either. Don’t ask again.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyes narrowed. “Something happened,” she said. “I pulled some stuff, didn’t I? What did I do?”

Stephen kept his mouth shut, and motioned to Miles to do the same. There was no point in giving Mrs. Kontos-Wu, if that’s who she was, any more information than she already had.

But she was working it out for herself. “I did that to you — didn’t I, Miles? Your head?” Miles stared at her, stone-faced. “Shit, I’m sorry if that’s what happened. Did I—” Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyelids fluttered, which Stephen knew to be one of the few signs of real distress that his comrade would show “—did I kill anyone?”

“Save the questions,” said Stephen. “Right now, it’s important you tell me — what did Fyodor — Mr. Kolyokov — say to you?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu considered the question. “All right. I guess holding out won’t go far in convincing you I’m of sound mind and body. Here goes.” She shut her eyes and licked her lips. When she spoke again, it wasn’t her voice — it was Fyodor Kolyokov, speaking as it were, from beyond the grave.

“Stephen my love. If you get this message (said Kolyokov through Mrs. Kontos-Wu) then my ruse has worked and I have succeeded in returning our operative to herself. You may have encountered her in her previous state — she was inhabited by a powerful dream-walker, up to no good — but if that happened, I doubt both of you would be alive — and therefore I doubt you would be hearing this.

“Assuming the best, then, I also assume you have encountered certain truths already. You will — I hope — have found me by now, in a coma or unconscious, in my tank. You will have taken the appropriate steps — yes? — and had me moved to the infirmary on the fifth floor. If you have not done so yet, in hopes that I may return to my corporeal self — abandon that hope for the moment, and put my body in a doctor’s care immediately. I will wait here until you’re finished.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s eyes blinked open. “Oh,” she said, in her own voice. “I’m supposed to stop and wait until you’ve taken care of Mr. Kolyokov — unless you already have?”

Stephen felt himself flush. “He’s taken care of,” he said. “Keep going.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shut her eyes again.

“All done? Good. A couple of other things have no doubt come to pass in my absence. Unless I miss my guess, Shadak will have telephoned you by now. He will have been very angry, I’m willing to bet, but it’s his own fault. He sent a submarine with our cargo — a submarine! — and the cargo we were meant to collect escaped, and took it over. I don’t know what’s happened beyond that. I have been — compromised for the time being.

“I trust you have revealed nothing of my state to Mr. Shadak. That is good — always play your cards close to the vest as the Americans say. But it is time to contact Mr. Shadak again. We need to find out everything he knows about the cargo — where it came from, how many children are in fact involved, who else has had contact with them, and so on.

“And there is one other thing that we must discuss now. This one is… difficult. Our operative Alexei Kilodovich is missing. I know you are saying: so what? Kilodovich is nothing, just more sleeper muscle, new in the organization in any case — cannon fodder in the event things became ugly. That is what I led you to believe, and I must apologize for that, because I misled you, Stephen. In fact, Kilodovich’s disappearance is a very serious problem indeed.

“I know you were suspicious when we brought Kilodovich on board. And you were right. We didn’t go to all that trouble to recruit him as muscle. In fact, Mrs. Kontos-Wu is more than capable of taking care of herself. Kilodovich was a part of the exchange. Mr. Shadak was very interested in meeting our Alexei Kilodovich. He believes that there is advantage in having that one. In a way he is right. But whatever the matter — without Kilodovich, there is no exchange.