George Martin: Lowball

At the end of the hall was another closed door. Franny leaned against it. Partly to listen, partly because he needed to lean on something. Through the thick wood he faintly heard shouts, screams, and gunfire.

He really didn’t want to face any more gunfire, but he couldn’t wait for Baba Yaga and her goons to regain control. He had to add to the chaos and use it to escape. He sucked in several deep breaths, then pushed open the door.

He was in the casino proper. The usual dings and rings of gambling machines were muted. Many of the slots had been knocked over. Extremely well-dressed people were running in all directions. Women’s discarded shoes littered the carpeted floor. Franny even spotted a forlorn toupee dangling off a chair like a dead squirrel. The room reeked of cordite and cigarette smoke.

Across the large, chandelier-hung room he spotted IBT writhing toward elaborate double doors. His tongue shot out like a lashing whip, leaving behind convulsing people. A young woman ran at his side, gripping his hand while with the other she held a pistol that she used with murderous skill.

“Marcus!” Franny yelled, but over the screams and gunshots and the crashes as people tore open cash boxes behind the cashier’s stands he wasn’t heard.

That looked like the way out so Franny followed in the snake-man’s wake. He passed through a lobby with a coat check area, and a bench where a large man with a suspicious bulge under his shoulder was slumped. The mark of IBT’s tongue was on his face. The doors were standing wide open.

Franny stepped out as a battalion of police cars swarmed up, lights blazing and sirens blaring. A loudspeaker blared out instructions in a language he didn’t understand. But he was a cop. He could guess. He threw down the Uzi, and put his hands up, bit back a cry of pain as it hurt his wounded shoulder. “I’m a cop! American.Police officer!! ” He reached slowly into his pocket to pull out his badge.

Somebody shot him.

The bullet ripped into his side. Franny fell. He heard people yelling. He vaguely felt hands rifling his pockets. The face of a young man holding aloft a saline bag, the swaying roof of an ambulance.

Darkness.

Getting shot hurt.

Getting shot twice … well, that should have hurt twice as much, but it seemed like more. Ten times as much, at least.

The treatment after the fact hadn’t been much better. The Kazakh police had handcuffed him roughly, despite the blood leaking from him. Since he had a bullet in his shoulder, and another in his side, he had lost all macho cred by screaming. That penetrated the language barrier and they had taken him to the hospital, where the personnel had seemed overwhelmed by the number of gunshot and poisoning victims as well as some old joker hunched in a wheelchair, a creature as hideous as he was pathetic.

Franny hadn’t been sure what to expect from a Kazakh hospital, but it wasn’t all that different from an American facility. He had been taken quickly into surgery, and awakened in a private room. He had a feeling this wasn’t the norm, but the presence of two large, very unsympathetic Kazakh policemen at the door made his status crystal clear.

He kept demanding to see the American ambassador and kept being ignored. He’d then tried using the fraternity of law enforcement to generate some sympathy from his guards. That hadn’t worked either. Maybe because none of them could understand a word he was saying.

He decided to get dressed even though his bloodstained shirt was gone; he didn’t feel terribly effective clad in an open-back hospital gown. But when he opened the door, he found himself looking down the barrel of his guards’ submachine guns. Franny had a brief moment of thinking the perps in New York would sure as fuck be impressed if he had one of those instead of his service pistol.

One guard snapped out something in what sounded like Russian. Or maybe Kazakh. He had no fucking clue. Franny indicated his bare if bandaged torso. “Hey, how about a shirt? T-shirt? Anything?”

The guards looked at him with disinterest and shut the door again.

Franny returned to the bed, sat down, tried to think. It was a hopeless effort. His thoughts kept returning over and over to those chaotic moments when Jamal had been killed. His throat felt tight, and he swallowed hard for a couple of seconds. He had liked the cynical SCARE agent. I got Stuntman killed .

He was now totally alone. When he failed to check in Maseryk would probably figure out where he’d gone. Maybe eventually someone from the NYPD or the State Department or SCARE or somebody would ride to the rescue.

“I got most of the jokers home,” Franny said aloud to the room.

The room wasn’t impressed.

The door opened, and his guards entered accompanied by a man with a secretive face and slicked-back brown hair that made Franny think of an otter. His suit was expensive. He wore a Rolex, and the wire from a radio earpiece ran down into his collar.

The guards grabbed Franny’s arms, and frog-marched him out of the room. It hurt his shoulder and his side and he yelled. “Hey! What are you doing? Where are we going?” He was being hustled down the hall. “I demand to see the American ambassador! I’m a police officer, you can’t-”

The man in the suit slapped him hard across the face. Franny chewed on the bright coppery taste of blood and shut up.

“Baba Yaga wishes to see you,” the man said in a voice that had one of those unidentifiable but superior European accents.

A flock of moths seemed to have taken up residence in Franny’s gut. He could feel a subtle trembling in his legs. Okay, he was going to die. He didn’t have to face it whimpering like a girl. He stiffened his spine, glared at the otter, and said, “ I’m under guard, but she gets to send fucking errand boys? She’s a fucking criminal. Why aren’t these guys-” He jerked a thumb at the two cops. “-on her door?”

“Because she is a respected member of the business community here in Talas, and you are American cowboy cop who is very much out of his jurisdiction.”

The otter pushed open the door, and for the first time Franny faced the woman behind all of this madness.

She was a small, wizened figure, her dyed red hair shockingly bright against the stacked pillows. She seemed fragile until she lifted heavy eyelids, and gave Franny a piercing look out of the coldest, most calculating gray eyes he had ever seen.

He was pushed inexorably forward until he stood at the side of the bed. The two guards backed away. Baba Yaga’s wrinkled lips worked.

Baba Yaga spoke. “So, this is the hero,” she said, in English. Franny stared at her wondering what Berman had meant about furniture and footstools? “Stupid, stupid, boy,” the old woman went on. “You have no idea what you have done. He is waking. And we are all dead now.”

Franny swallowed. “We?” he said. “Who, we?”

Baba Yaga laughed and pointed at Franny. “You.” She touched her breast. “Me. Them.” Her gesture encompassed the otter and the cops and set the gem-encrusted rings to flashing. “Talas. Kazakhstan. Eventually … the world.”

Somewhere far off, in a distant part of the hospital, people began screaming.