David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Okay, Mr. B. This is probably going to be the last call you get from me for a while. The road’s running along the fuckin’ ocean right now and there’s nothing along here but grass and darkness. Nothing. It’s like we’re goin’ into the fuckin’ sea, into the sea in the space capsule… . It smells like that.

“We’re stopped at a gas station right now, and the driver says — he says we’re not going to be stopping again. Until we get there. Halifax. Fuck. Sorry. I’m scared out of my fuckin’ mind I don’t mind telling you.

“Everybody’s gone like the fuckin’ maid now. Like zombies. I can see ’em from here — all sittin’ up straight in their bus seats waitin’ for the driver to finish pumping. Someone’s put on the fuckin’ tape recorder again. That same guy. Deep voice singing in Russian about some woman called Natascha. Probably a fuckin’ stripper, right, Mr. B?

“Fuck, Mr. B. — they’re getting just like that bitch in the hotel — you know the one of whom I’m speaking. Like anything inside them is gone, you know? Think they’re goin’ to try and do me? I don’t —

“—Fuck. That fuckin’ driver Orlovsky is coming over here. He’s got a look in his eye — like — fuck. I gotta go.”

A scuffing noise, as if the telephone receiver was rattling on the side of a phone —

—a deep voice, mumbling in Russian: “Sergei,” was the only word that came through.

Leo spoke at a great distance. “What the fuck?” he said. And the line beeped again.

“That’s all on the tape,” said Bucci. “Assistant manager picked up the messages when he came in to work this morning. We figured maybe Leo was dead by now, being as we had not heard from anyone. But now it turns out he’s not dead — right?” He turned to the red-shirted TOC-er.

“He said he was on a boat,” said the TOC-er.

“That’s right,” said Bucci, “using someone’s satellite phone.”

“Your man,” said Shadak, “is incompetent. He allowed himself to be captured. Gave himself away. Incompetent.”

Bucci stood up and went over to the window. Water streamed down the glass as black clouds blotted out what remained of the sunlight. Bucci tapped on the glass. “Hmm. Stupid. On some weird fuckin’ midlife crisis jag that I don’t understand. But he’s not dead. Now he’s on a boat. And he’s using someone’s satellite phone. Flavio?”

“Yeah?” said the red-shirted Flavio.

“You got a tape of the guy?”

“Nuh-uh. No tape. He talked with Neil direct.”

“Neil?”

“Neil Walberg,” said Flavio. “Your new Assistant Manager. Skinny fuckin’ kid. Got a big metal stud on his nose. Tattoo of a whale or some fuckin’ thing on his back. Hair like a fuckin’ fetus, which is to say none.”

“Right. Fuckin’ little Commie.”

“So Leo made Neil write down what he said. Word for word. Neil read it to me over the phone. Said he was going to fax it.”

Shadak gave Bucci a look.

“Go get it,” said Bucci.

Dear Mister B,

I am in a boat out in the ocean, It is a freight boat. Its carrying me and the other people on the bus, and boxes of expensive food. We got on the boat in a town called Cloriform Cloridorme. They have docks and a post office and shitty little houses but no where to eat and no people at least not out at night, The guys on the boat speak Russian. We are not going to Halifax I found out. We are going to a place called New Pokrovskoye. It is where everybody’s Grandmother lives. That is all that they say when they talk in English which they hardly ever do now.

I kind of got into trouble with Orlovsky, but it is okay now. I am just doing the zombie thing all the time and that seems to be good enough for the rest of them. Orlovsky thinks I am just more messed up than usual. He keeps saying these words to me: “Mango Vasaline Bubba yaya.” I do not know what they mean but his eyes go all wide like he expects something from me so I just make my eyes go all blank and mumble like the rest of them. It seems to be working so I am sticking with it.

I am calling you now from a satellite phone that I found down below. The battery is no good though so I do not know how long I can talk. But I’ll call you again when no one’s

Shadak put down the paper.

“All right,” he said, “where is this New Pokrovskoye? This Cloridorme? Do you have a map?”

“Just use the Internet,” said Flavio.

“Fuck off with your fuckin’ Internet,” said Bucci. “That’s for porn and gambling. This is serious shit. Get our guest a road map. This is a fuckin’ hotel, there’s got to be a road map in here somewhere.”

Flavio nodded, and turned to a card player. “You!” he said. “You heard ’im. Go!”

Lightning flickered like a short circuit through the blinds. Bucci steeple his hands and peered over his tall middle fingers at his thick pinkies, like they held some clue. The card players put their cards down and stared under the table at their feet the same way. Amar Shadak stood by the window and stared out into what was turning into a very angry day.

Shadak felt himself, his own anger, growing ever closer to the surface. He looked out the window, at his faint reflection in the glass. His eyes were blazing — his mouth, thin and quivering. He rolled his shoulders — straightened his back — and tried to force his lips into a pleasant smile. He looked like one of those vampires from The Omega Man , all crazy and hungry for blood. Shadak much preferred the look of the old Nazi dentist — calm and pleasant, a consummate professional who applied his craft at the diamond-tipped end of a drill. But that wasn’t coming. Not today. Shadak stopped smiling and tried to relax.

The door opened and the map guy came back. He had a little blue American Automobile Association book called Drive North America . Gepetto beckoned the map guy and Shadak to join him at the table, and they spent a while flipping through the road Atlas. They found Cloridorme quickly enough — the Gaspé Peninsula was indeed like a tongue, and all the towns on it were cankered along its outer edges. Cloridorme was out near the end, on the north coast.

New Pokrovskoye was another matter. It didn’t show up in any indices, and wasn’t marked anywhere they can see. Finally, throwing up his hands, Bucci said, “Fine! Try the fuckin’ Internet!”

They had to go downstairs to the front desk for that. The little office in back of it had a big old computer with a tiny little monitor, and a screeching little modem hooked up to the telephone jack. Flavio seemed to be the only one who knew what he was doing, so they all waited while he started going.

“There ain’t no New Pokrovskoye anywhere that I can see,” he said finally. “All the references are Russian.”

“So is there a New Pokrovskoye in Russia?” said Shadak.

“Just a Pokrovskoye.” Flavio tapped the screen, which showed a list of names next to advertisements for casinos and cars and cellular telephones. Shadak squinted at them.

“Those are web sites,” said Flavio.

“Shut the fuck up — he knows that,” said Bucci.

“Most of them,” said Shadak, “reference ‘Rasputin,’ I notice.”

“Yeah,” said Flavio. He moved the arrow to the first of them. “Let’s see why.”

The screen went white for a moment, then after a certain amount of waiting started to fill up with words and pictures.

“ Rasputin’s Lair ,” read Shadak, then scanned down. The web page appeared to be concerned with an elaborate fiction about the mad monk Rasputin, and his adventures in the boudoir of a Russian noblewoman called Tanya. The picture, as it loaded, showed a crudely manipulated photograph of a black-bearded man in monk’s robes, mounting a plump young woman from behind.