David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

He shrugged, and smiled to himself. The Koldun had been right about one thing: Alexei needed some time to think things through more than he needed to ask questions. He pulled the heavy wooden door open and stepped into the cool dimness of the lighthouse’s base.

Alexei let the door swing shut behind him as he stepped into the middle of the lighthouse’s deep silo. Planks creaked as he shifted his weight. The floor here was dark, but the glow of the afternoon leaked past the wooden stairs that crawled up the inside of the tower to the light room. And the Koldun wasn’t lying about other things: there were cots lined against the curving walls, with clean white linen and yellow wool blankets folded at their feet. A card table was set up in the middle, and atop that a cloth-covered dish bulging in ways suggestive of bread and meats. A metal jug held water, and Alexei poured some of it into one of the cups beside it. Under the table, Alexei spotted a bottle of Smirnoff vodka — but he felt it best to leave it alone for now.

So was this a dream then? The water was cold on Alexei’s lips and it made a very convincing line of coolness down his middle as he swallowed it. But the water he’d dreamed drinking the past two months was just as convincing — less sweet, more brackish, but very realistic nonetheless. So sure — he could be dreaming. He could be a sleeping child now in the depths of City 512, recasting his future into the life of a former secret agent who’d somehow wound up in this lighthouse drinking a cup of nice sweet water. That might have been the dream. He might have another dream ahead of him… .

Alexei pulled the cloth off the food. The bread was thick and white and looked as though it had been freshly baked. Beside it were slices of a dark sausage, infused with garlic and thick clots of fat. Alexei took some meat and some bread and made himself an open-faced sandwich. He bit into it. Tasted good.

“Not a bad dream, if that’s what it is,” he said to no one. “No point in spoiling it by sleeping.”

Sandwich in hand, Alexei made his way past the cots with their convincingly fresh linen, to the base of the stairs. He wanted to see what the view was like from the top — before the daylight spent itself back to darkness.

Alexei could see a fair distance from the aerie. He found one road leading inland, but it ended at the gleaming roofs of what Alexei took to be a long, low set of greenhouses, maybe a kilometre off. They formed a cruciform around a tin-roofed structure that climbed two storeys more. Just beyond that, Alexei could make out what looked like concrete pads — and some long, low buildings with flat roofs and low chimneys. Thin gravel roads crawled between them. But beyond that, the land was barren. Alexei shook his head. What kind of a village these days doesn’t even have a concession road coming in to service it?

Someplace like City 512, perhaps? Alexei settled back into the canvas chair next to the lamp assembly. It could follow. If that was real — if this was real — if the things that Alexei had learned about himself were anything approaching the truth.

The Koldun may have been lying about everything else — but one thing he had gotten right. Alexei needed some time to think this through.

First point. It was clear to him that the Russians — his masters — were operating a sleeper agent program. Alexei had gone through a raft of programming to become one of these sleeper agents — men and women who were operated remotely by psychics who could, at the drop of a hat, fly through the air or pass through walls like ghosts. He had gone to a training school called City 512 to learn how to be a sleeper. And the memories he carried could not be trusted.

“Fine,” said Alexei aloud. The false memories included potentially several layers: one, of his education as a KGB assassin somewhere near Murmansk. Alexei was unclear as to why, however, such a false memory would be implanted in a sleeper agent who was meant to spy on the Americans. Unless he was meant to spy on someone else. Someone… nearer.

“Aha,”said Alexei aloud. That could be it.Alexei Kilodovich was a manufactured KGB assassin — made, perhaps, by one of the many factions of politicians in the Kremlin who wished to have an ace up their sleeve for this purpose. Why not have one of their assassins empowered to turn on his Comrades if necessary? He was an insurance policy for some ambitious Communist.

“But,” said Alexei as he chewed on his sandwich. What of the dream-walking? He had assuredly, at least in the early stages of his life, been vetted to become one of the puppet-masters. Fyodor Kolyokov had indicated he was a complete failure at dream-walking.

And yet, had he not prevented the old poet’s execution — based on his own sudden intuition? Had he not predicted the arrival of General Rodionov?

Why, if Alexei were enough of a psychic to do that, had Fyodor Kolyokov cast him down into the company of untalented sleeper agents?

Alexei crossed his arms and looked out the glass. There was, of course, one easy answer.

This all might have been a dream. All, nothing but shit.

Alexei had been sulking over the view for nearly an hour when he spotted the lone figure making his way along the path to the lighthouse. “Aha,” he said aloud. It was James, the shaven-headed fellow who’d pulled him from the sea on Holden Gibson’s yacht. Alexei leaned on the railing around the circumference of the light room as James approached the lighthouse — then made his way down the stairs as the door opened.

Alexei watched from the stairs as James came in. He looked to the left and the right. Alexei was about to shout hello, when a glint of metal in James’ hand caught his eye. The shout caught in his throat, and Alexei pulled back on the stairs and stilled his breath.

The glint was from the barrel of a gun.

No dream , thought Alexei.

James squinted up to where Alexei had hidden himself. James moved to the base of the stairs and raised the gun.

It looked like Holden Gibson’s Glock semiautomatic. James held it in both hands, one elbow crooked so he could sight along it. He’d aimed it along the curve of the wall — if it fired now, the bullet might hit Alexei in a ricochet. But if James saw Alexei — it would be nothing to adjust the aim a degree up and another to the left, and shoot him there.

James started up the stairs. He blinked, as his eyes adjusted — and the barrel of the gun moved up and to the left and trained on Alexei’s chest.

“Russkie,” he said — in a voice that seemed not his own. “I got you, Russkie. Don’t fuckin’ move.”

“I am not moving,” said Alexei.

“Good.” James wasn’t moving either. He stood in what seemed an impossibly uncomfortable position, aiming the gun at Alexei’s chest, while he spoke in that strange, incongruous voice.

“Now, I want you to tell me simple. How the fuck come you’ve been thinkin’ about nothing but killing me?”

“Ah — don’t be upset, James. But I’ve barely thought about you at all.”

James stood as a statue. “I meant Gibson. Not — not me. How the fuck come you been thinking about nothing but killing fucking Holden Gibson?”

Alexei squinted. He thought about City 512; about what he’d learned from his childhood; about the dream-walking and Fyodor Kolyokov, and the horrifying dance for General Rodionov, and everything else. He looked closely at James.

“Holden Gibson?” he said. “Is that you?”

“Hold the fuck still!” The statue of James was screaming at the top of its lungs. “Hold still or I’ll fuckin’ kill you! Now why the fuck do you want to kill me?”

Alexei was amazed. It was Holden Gibson standing there — holding his own gun on Alexei. He somehow inhabited the body of his worker James. Gibson was to James — what Fyodor Kolyokov had been to Alexei all those years: his puppet-master.