Eric Lustbader - Last Snow

He halfheartedly sought to disentangle himself, but she climbed on top of him, reached down for him, her fingers encircling. “We all have insane notions, now and again.” She squeezed gently, bringing him to readiness. “It’s the human condition.”

DYADYA GOURDJIEV was in the midst of making coffee, strong enough to keep him up for the rest of what remained of the night, when a pounding on the front door set his heart to racing. Setting down the plastic dipper full of freshly ground coffee he stepped out of the kitchen, padded on slippered feet across the living room. The pounding came again, more insistent this time, if that were possible.

“Who is it?” he asked with his cheek nearly against the door.

“Open up,” came the voice from the other side, “or I’ll have the damn knob blown off !”

Figuratively girding his loins for what was to come, Dyadya Gourdjiev flipped open the lock. No sooner had he begun to turn the knob than the door fairly exploded inward. Had he not stepped nimbly aside the edge of the door would have cracked the bone above his eye socket.

Two men rushed inside, one of them slammed the door shut behind them. He was the muscle, the one with the Makarov pistol. The other man was Kaolin Arsov, the head of the Izmaylovskaya grupperovka family in Moscow. Dyadya Gourdjiev had been expecting him more or less from the moment Annika and her new friends had left his apartment.

Arsov had the eyes of a predator and the complexion of a dead fish, as if he preferred darkness to sunlight. Perhaps he was allergic or in some perverse fashion averse to natural light of any sort. He looked like the kind of man you wouldn’t want to cross, a man whose strong arm you’d want with you in, say, a knife fight or a street brawl, even if his judgement was suspect. He’d sell his brother to the highest bidder—Dyadya Gourdjiev knew that he had, in fact, done just that—in order to gain territory and prestige, but once given he’d never renege on his word, which was, in his neck of the world, the only true and lasting measure of a man.

“Gospodin Gourdjiev, what a pleasure it is to see you again.” His lips were smiling, but his eyes remained as cold and calculating as any predator.

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.” Dyadya Gourdjiev held his ground, which was the only way to play this situation. Arsov could smell fear and indecision from a mile away. Weakness of any kind or to any degree was what he sniffed out, using it like a cudgel against his prey, because for him the world was strength and weakness, nothing existed in between. Not that Dyadya Gourdjiev thought that Arsov considered him prey, but in the end the difference was negligible. Gourdjiev was someone to intimidate, knock around a little, someone from whom he could get information. That was how Arsov would play it, anyway; there were no surprises with men like him, who were akin to steel girders, neither bending nor breaking, thinking themselves invincible.

Arsov shrugged as he swaggered around the living room, picking up a statuette here, a framed photo there, studying them with blank eyes. He returned them in deliberately haphazard fashion, a silent warning to Dyadya Gourdjiev that Arsov had the power to turn his world upside down. “No matter. I’ve come for Annika. Where is she?”

“In the back of beyond,” Dyadya Gourdjiev said. “Far away from your clutches, I expect.”

“And of course you helped send her there.” Arsov paused in his perambulation and grinned with teeth that were preternaturally long, wicked as a wolf’s. “Wherever there is.”

“I don’t know where she is.”

Arsov leered. His breath was sour from vodka, cheap cigarettes, and a stomach that could tolerate neither. “I don’t believe you.”

“I can’t help that.”

Arsov’s head flicked only slightly, but his muscle cocked the hammer on the Makarov.

“That’s not a good idea.” Dyadya Gourdjiev held his ground like the front line against a putsch.

Arsov beckoned his man with a wave of his hand that was almost perfunctory, or negligent, as if the life or death of Dyadya Gourdjiev was of little moment. “I’ll decide whether it’s a good idea or not, old man.”

“He’s right, Arsov, it’s not a good idea.” The man who spoke had emerged from the kitchen as silently as an angel, or a demon. He was wide shouldered and slim hipped. With his wire-rimmed glasses he looked like a professor, or perhaps an accountant. And yet there was something in him that made the observer wary, set him back on his heels, as if struck by a sudden fistful of air. A discernable chill invaded the room, as if the man had sucked the oxygen out of it.

Arsov’s eyebrows arched in hateful surprise. “I had no idea you might be here.”

Oriel Jovovich Batchuk spread his hands. “And yet, here I am.” His basilisk gaze alighted on the muscle. “Put that idiotic thing away before you hurt yourself.”

The man, mumbling something, looked to his boss for guidance.

“What’s that?” Batchuk said.

“I said I don’t take orders from you.”

Everything happened at once then. The muscle lifted the Makarov, Arsov started to speak, and Batchuk raised his left arm as if he were about to direct traffic, or hail a friend on the street. Something small launched out of the space between his sleeve and his wrist, blurred through the air, and buried itself in the center of the muscle’s throat. The man dropped the pistol, clutching at his throat with his trembling fingers. He gasped, his lips took on a distinctly bluish tint. A white froth foamed out his half-open mouth as he collapsed in a heap.

“Who do you take orders from now?” Batchuk said with contempt rather than irony. Then he turned his attention back to Arsov, smiling without revealing a single iota of emotion. “Now, Arsov, what were you saying?”

“I have a legitimate grievance,” Arsov said, his gaze magnetized by his own man, now nothing more than flesh poisoned by a dart coated with hydrocyanic acid. “Annika Dementieva must pay for the murder she committed.”

“You leave Annika to me.”

Arsov’s eyes at last engaged Batchuk’s. “You yourself guaranteed me complete noninterference.”

“I said I will deal with the matter.” The deputy prime minister cleared his throat. “There will be no more interference in Izmaylovskaya business.”

Arsov nodded. As he was about to step over his fallen bodyguard, Batchuk said, “You brought it in, you take it out.”

Grunting, the mob boss dragged the corpse to the front door and opened it. As he was about to drag him over the threshold, Batchuk added, “A grievance doesn’t excuse vulgarity. You’re in society now, Arsov, you’d do well to remember that.”

The door slammed behind the two men and, in three strides, Batchuk crossed the room, locked the door, and turned back to his host.

“The vermin that comes in off the street these days.” He clucked his tongue and shook his head. “Perhaps I should send an exterminator over for a week or so.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary, Oriel Jovovich.” Dyadya Gourdjiev returned to the kitchen to continue preparing the coffee.

“Still,” the deputy prime minister said as he leaned against the doorway, “it might be prudent.”

“I’d really prefer not.” Dyadya Gourdjiev set the coffeepot on the fire ring, took down two glasses as large as beer steins. “You’ll do what you want, in any event.”

“It’s a deputy prime minister’s prerogative.”

“I’m talking about long before you rose to that position.” Dyadya Gourdjiev turned to face Batchuk. “I’m talking about the young man I knew, the young man who—”

“Stop! Not another word!” Batchuk raised a hand, a singularly violent gesture that might have been directed as much at himself as at the older man.