Сергей Лебедев - Untraceable

His father, who had been awarded an order in 1968 for helping to suppress the Prague Spring with Operation Danube, never could accept the troop withdrawal. The treachery. The collapse of the impoverished army. The forced move to the reserves. He drank himself to death at the dacha he bought with the money he had saved while serving abroad, amid the apple trees that would not bear fruit on the poor, peaty soil. Shershnev would have been very happy for his father to see him now.

He was coming back.

While departing Moscow, their baggage, unexamined, was deposited in the cart with the luggage of the other passengers. The baggage for the flight had long been unloaded now. Suitcases from Hurghada circled on the lone working carousel.

Grebenyuk learned that their flight had been unloaded on carousel four. He found the piled-up suitcases. Shershnev’s was not among them. They walked around the baggage claim area once again. Empty.

There were a dozen people at the Lost and Found counter. Shershnev recognized people from his flight: there was the bratty girl and her parents; there was the couple whose documents were spilled at passport control.

The counter was closed. No schedule, no notice. According to some cleaning person, the staff would come at five in the morning. Shershnev and Grebenyuk exchanged a look.

In principle, there was nothing in the suitcase of critical importance for the operation. Just everyday clothing, sensibly selected, good quality, and inconspicuous. Shershnev had proposed traveling without any luggage, even if it did not fit their image of guys on vacation looking for beer, girls, and presents. They needed only a few days. Then they would get back home. Nobody would care about the details of their cover stories. If they did, that meant the operation had gone south.

Despite the pressure and haste, they were outfitted more than adequately, good for months or years. The bosses had played it very safe, hedging their bets in case the operation failed. Now Shershnev felt that the loss of the suitcase was a good thing, as if all the additions, embellishments, and last-minute instructions were gone along with it. He taped his luggage tag to the counter, writing the name of his hotel on it. Let them send it, if they find it, they wouldn’t be there anymore.

Two people at the Green Corridor. A tubby man busy with his cell phone. A thin blonde, clearly his senior, was adjusting her badge. Shershnev walked slightly ahead and to the left, setting himself up to be checked and covering his partner. The blonde let him through, and then called to Grebenyuk as he was almost past her.

Grebenyuk stopped. His English was poor, just enough to pass a test and get a raise. Shershnev had to interpret for him.

“Are you together?”

Shershnev nodded.

“How much cash do you have?”

“Four thousand euros.” Shershnev obsequiously reached for his wallet.

“Open it.” She pointed to Grebenyuk’s bag.

He took it off his shoulder, laid it on the desk, and unzipped it. Shershnev checked the shiny panels of opaque glass in his peripheral vision; were there dark shadows of men in camouflage and masks, weapons ready? This was the best time to grab them, as they were the only four people in the corridor.

The fat man stopped staring at his phone and came over, blocking the way out. Grebenyuk was showing the customs officer his things. She pointed to his toiletry bag. Grebenyuk opened it unhesitatingly. The bottle glimmered in the light.

The woman looked at it with interest. She looked up at Grebenyuk. The major was of average height and big boned, dressed in expensive clothes, but still looked like a country hick who had been eating sunflower seeds and putting the shells in his pocket; he stood there quietly and calmly.

Shershnev’s heart dropped to his feet. Only now did the disparity become apparent between the expensive cologne and Grebenyuk’s appearance and the rest of the items in his bag.

Shershnev even imagined that she was sniffing the air to see if Grebenyuk was wearing that cologne.

Witch. She sensed something but could not tell where the deceit was; she was angry and she might even ask Grebenyuk to spray the bottle. Their instructions did not cover this possibility; everyone had been certain that the bottle would not attract notice. The technicians swore that the copy was exact, that even the manufacturer would not be able to tell, and that it weighed what the original did.

It was made by men, Shershnev thought. They could have messed up the color, using a similar shade instead of the correct one. They could have made a mistake in the ornate script. The female officer surely knew the duty-free assortment, she had a trained eye, and maybe her husband used that cologne. Or maybe her acute sense picked up on the container’s special aura. After all, the glass was not made at the factory but in their special technical shop; different hands polished it, with other thoughts, with other aims. Witch.

Shershnev was figuring out how to distract her. Drop his bag? Say something?

“Ken ve go?” Grebenyuk asked, with a horrible accent and the supplicating simplicity of a confused foreigner scared by foreign customs.

The official, as if waking up, nodded automatically. Grebenyuk adjusted the things in his bag without haste. As he closed it, the zipper caught on fabric, he pulled it up and down and then tried to pull out the lining from the teeth. She turned away. Other passengers, cursing loudly about the airport service, entered the corridor. Grebenyuk threw his bag over his shoulder. Shershnev felt sharp needles pricking his hands.

“Dying for a piss,” Grebenyuk said. “Where’s the john here?”

They walked past the drivers holding signboards bearing names. The air was filled with the odors of unfamiliar food, tobacco, and car exhaust, which seemed to smell differently than back home.

In the toilet, Grebenyuk urinated noisily for a long time, while Shershnev couldn’t start. It was only when Grebenyuk headed for the sink that the flow began from his penis. A cleaner came in, and Shershnev felt an overwhelming desire to knock over his cart, break the mop, and splash the bucket water on the walls.

He looked at himself in the mirror over the sink.

His face looked the same.

Kalitin had dozed off in his favorite leather armchair by the fire. The smoky warmth and cognac had put him to sleep.

He dreamed that he was without flesh or memory and flying over a dark plain. He was soaring but he did not know his destination. The wind tossed him to the side, turned him upside down. Above him was emptiness, a malevolent sky without stars or planets. It was filled with visible wind, fluttering, flickering, like the potent milt of gigantic flying fish.

A wave crashed below. The dull arrow of a river showed him the way. He flew and his flight stirred the water. The bewhiskered catfish, at the bottom for the night, and the spotted burbots awoke from their sleep; so did the golden pheasants in the rushes.

A school of fish, his flock, swam behind him. Roe deer and hares, jackals, foxes, wolves, and boars ran along the banks—up, up, against the current, against gravity.

The stars lit up, gathering strength. Strange lights of imaginary constellations: Hour Glass, Owl, Scepter, Sphinx, Rat. Where the Milky Way lay in the old world the constellation of the Snake extended glowing green and red; the Snake was wrapped around the bowl of the firmament, the bowl of the universe.

As he flew, homeless, his memory returned—distant, cherished. He remembered how he was born in a transparent vessel, in the midst of shining whiteness and light; voices called him by name, joyous voices of gods dressed in white, celebrating his birth.