Chimera

Chapter 7

“Where you going, Stef?”

It was a question I’d heard a hundred times before. You could search the world, any country or culture, and it was a good bet you’d hear the same words or a version of them anyway. It was the siren call of little brothers far and wide. Lukas, for all that he was a great kid, was no different there. Rolling my eyes with all the long sufferance I could scrape up, I stuffed another pair of wadded-up jeans into the duffel bag resting on my bed. “Football camp, runt. Remember?”

“No, you never said.” The corner of his mouth plunged down and a stubborn glint bloomed in his bicolored eyes. “You didn’t. I would remember.”

I thought it was more a matter of his not wanting to remember that led to his sudden amnesia. It was easy enough to understand even wrestling against the self-centered nature that was a biological by-product of being a teenager. It wasn’t as if we could simply run out the front door, grab our bikes and our buddies, and race off down your typical neighborhood street. This wasn’t a typical neighborhood, and we weren’t your typical kids. Those kids didn’t have “friends of the family” ferrying them back and forth to a private school exclusive enough to put a Kennedy on the waiting list. Those kids lived far from our stretch of beach, and if I thought they were the lucky ones, I kept it to myself. Our father wasn’t much on ungrateful children and had a spearing gaze that had even the smartest mouth snapping shut instantly. His brown eyes were mine, but I’d not seen any mirror reflect my irises paled to an ice-covered muddy pond. It might be a talent that came with age or it could come from something else entirely . . . something that I wasn’t sure I wanted to think about, not even at the ripe old age of fourteen.

I knew what Lukas was feeling. I’d felt it myself. It was easy to get lonely. There were only so many school activities you could do and only so many times a week Anatoly was willing to have us driven to friends’ houses. At the end of the day it came down to Lukas and me. With seven years’ difference between us, we didn’t have much in common. Video games and riding lessons; there wasn’t much more. That was all right; it was enough. Never mind that Lukas read encyclopedias as if they were comic books and I read whatever I was forced to for English class . . . or porn if I could sneak it. And it didn’t matter that he wanted to grow up to be a doctor or a chemist while, despite my father’s amused disdain, I still had crazy thoughts about the police academy.

All the differences between us didn’t matter a damn. We were all each other had. If it were the other way around and Lukas was off to camp, I’d miss the little shit. I’d die before I’d admit it, yeah, but I would miss him. Tugging at his olive green T-shirt, I pulled him down into a sitting position on the bed. “It’s just two weeks.” I might as well have said two years for the stricken look he gave me. Two weeks was forever when you were seven, and when you were a lonely seven, eternity wasn’t just a concept. It was a cold, hard reality. “You want me to write?”

“Would you?” He seized on the offer immediately, his face brightening to a sunny glow.

Yeah, that wouldn’t sentence me to two weeks of endless wedgies—writing my kid brother faithfully like the biggest dork on the planet. Swallowing a sigh, I managed to do the almost impossible and leapfrog a nicely healthy egocentric core. “Every day. How ’bout that?” Hooking an arm around a small, sturdy neck, I rubbed my knuckles lightly across his head in the ever-classic noogie.

He yelped, struggled, then collapsed laughing to rest against my side. When he regained his breath and quieted, he repeated the vow fervently, “Every day.” Twisting his head, he looked up at me. He was close enough that I could count the freckles on his nose, a gift from our mom. “You won’t forget? Like you forgot the Captain Crunch was mine? Like you forgot me at David Fedorov’s birthday party?”

Shrewd pup; his memory worked just fine when he wanted it to. That had been two years ago and I had forgotten him. It had been for only a half hour, but it had been a pretty scary half hour for a five-year-old roaming around lost in a house bigger than the governor’s mansion. We’d all trooped outside after cake for volleyball and swimming, and it had never crossed my mind Lukas had disappeared into the bathroom only minutes before. The housekeeper found him later sitting forlornly on the sweeping stairs and led him out to the rest of the party. He hadn’t been mad. Lukas never got mad at his oh-so-amazing older brother, but he hadn’t forgotten that I once had.

“Elephants have nothing on you, do they?” I rested my chin on his head. “I won’t forget, kiddo.” Screw the guys at camp. Let them make fun all they want. “I won’t forget you again. Promise.” I meant it too, with an unshakable resolution I couldn’t have dreamed would have to last so long.

So damn long.

I couldn’t say what brought that particular memory to mind, but it wasn’t surprising that my mind was boiling with every moment that I could recall of a seven-year-old boy’s life. It was just too bad for the guy whose throat was under my shoe that the flash of guilt storming through my brain happened right then. It certainly didn’t put me in a very happy or forgiving frame of mind. It was a piece-of-shit world that took what should’ve been sweet nostalgia and turned it into nothing more than bitter regret. I had a feeling a small portion of that regret was about to be passed on.

Leaning a fraction harder, I let gravity take my weight until the distressed squawking died out beneath me. “Dipping into the till, Vasily.” I shook my head, bored. “You think I have nothing better to do than kick your preklag?”

Normally this wasn’t my job, punishing the stupid. I was a bodyguard, not random muscle, and I wasn’t too wild about this new detour in my career path. No matter how temporary, this was not what I wanted to do. Maybe none of it was. What had once seemed as inevitable as the tide now seemed nothing short of criminal insanity. Everyone was born with a soul; when had I decided to throw mine away?

It didn’t matter because I knew exactly when I was getting it back—two more days. Two more days and I wouldn’t be the person I had been, but I would be better than I was now. It wasn’t saying much, I realized with a dark twist of my lips, but it was better than nothing. I’d lived ten years with the nothing, and I had few illusions there was worse than that.

“How much did you take, sika?” The demand was harsh, the voice itself cut glass and shattered ice. It was my father’s voice, clearly . . . unmistakably. And yet it managed to find its way from my mouth with a natural ease.

“Perhaps our dear friend Vasily would be more forthcoming with a crushed testicle.” Konstantin crossed his legs, tugging carefully at the crease of his elegant slacks. “Or two.” He was balanced on a barstool with the grace of a much younger man. With one arm resting along the polished wood and glass counter, he tapped his index finger imperiously against its surface. “Black tea, sugar and milk.” Our beloved leader had a trace of a sweet tooth and preferred his tea milky and as cloying as honey in contrast to the strong Cuban coffee he favored. With shaking hands, the guy behind the bar scrambled to obey.

The restaurant belonged to the man on the floor, Vasily Bormiroff, who was soon to be a eunuch if Gurov had his way. Correction—the restaurant belonged to Vasily in name only. In reality, the Samovar, as with so many other businesses, existed to launder money for the organization. When some of that money went missing, it was taken personally. Poor doomed Bormiroff; he must have thought himself pretty damn clever, taking only a little here and a little there. He wasn’t clever; he was a moron. Even a wayward penny would have snagged Konstantin’s eye. Vasily was nothing but a hen in a fox house and a hen that was well and truly caught.

It was my bad luck that I was snared just as thoroughly with him. Not by virtue of the money, no. Thou shalt not steal was an easy commandment to obey when the Lord’s wrath was so much more immediate. I preferred my balls unsmited; too bad it hadn’t been so simple a decision for Vasily. And because it had not, I was very likely going to have to do something I would regret. Removing my foot from his neck to place it on his crotch, I thought Vasily might accept the regret happily if he could trade places with me. His mouth hung open as he gasped wetly for breath. Just as moist, his eyes were the apprehensive velvet brown of a dog caught pissing on the carpet.

Yeah, a bad, bad boy, but he wasn’t escaping this with a swat on the muzzle. “The money,” I prompted, applying pressure. Up until then Vasily had been playing dumb, an act at which he excelled with true Oscar quality. As his opportunities for children began to dissipate beneath my heel, he abruptly decided owning up to it and taking his medicine was the best way to go. Once he began to talk, he couldn’t spill the location of his ill-gotten gains fast enough.

“Please . . . please, Mr. Gurov. Please. Sorry, so sorry. Never happen again, swear. I swear.” Still pinned to the floor, Bormiroff babbled on in that vein for some time as Konstantin drank his tea, undisturbed by the pleas or tears. Seeing a grown man cry from pure terror wasn’t enough to spoil a good cuppa. It might even add to the pleasure, if I correctly read the glitter behind the older man’s wire rim glasses.

“Yes, Vasily, my friend, I believe you. It truly shall never happen again.” Carefully patting his lips with a linen napkin, Konstantin stood and removed his glasses to tuck them away beneath his suit jacket. “Who knew you possessed a knowledge of the future to such an astounding degree?”

It was coming. It was coming and there didn’t seem to be a damn thing I could do about it. I felt my mouth go dry and my ears ring lightly as the air in the room went dead. But as stagnant as the atmosphere was, it still carried Gurov’s next words with uncanny clarity. Simple and innocuous, a casual bystander wouldn’t have guessed them for the death sentence they were.

“Stefan, we shall take a taxi.”

Implied was that the car was at my disposal for a disposal. With that he was gone, not a glance spared for the convulsively trembling man on the floor. In his mind, Vasily no longer existed except as a trunk accessory to be sandwiched between the spare tire and the jack. Trailing behind Gurov, Sevastian gave me a wink and a puckered smack of his lips. A bastard by any definition of the word, he was doing my customary job today, and he delighted in seeing me taking his. He and others thought I was overly fastidious about the wet work . . . that I didn’t like to get my hands dirty. Shaved head gleaming, thick lips curled in a gloat, he couldn’t wait to see my cherry popped because, frankly, he didn’t think I had the stomach for it.

I was beginning to think he was right.

The sharp smell of ammonia hit the air and I lifted my foot with a grimace. “Jesus, Vasily.” As I wiped the sole of my shoe on threadbare carpet, his hand moved to cover the now-wet crotch of his pants. Shame and despair had twisted his face into something primitive and unrecognizable. A Neanderthal watching a tornado form out of the sky above him would’ve worn a similar look: terror, disbelief, and a crushing realization of his own mortality.

“Don’t.” The incoherent prattling had stopped as Vasily’s face went putty gray. His chest hitched as the air whistled through his stiffened throat. His brain had locked down along with the rest of his body. He had one word and one word only left available to him, and he said it again with the voice of an aged and brittle rubber band stretched long past its breaking point. “Don’t.”

Goddamnit. I was fucked, and I was fucked but good. If I didn’t take out this embezzler, Konstantin would make sure I suffered what should’ve been Vasily’s fate and most likely before the sun went down. Only two more days and this shit storm had to come now. It was enough to make you believe in God, because random fate simply didn’t have the poisonous ingenuity for something this nasty.

Reaching down, I took a fistful of his shirt and pulled him upright. His legs gave out immediately, the muscle tone but a distant memory. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the white and staring face of the bartender. I ignored him; he was just another piece of the furniture. He belonged to Gurov the same as the restaurant did, and the possibility of his causing any trouble was nil. Giving Bormiriff a brisk shake in an effort to restart his engine, I ordered not unsympathetically, “Stand up, Vasily.” He tried; I have to give him that. He did try. Unsteady as a newborn foal, he did his best to straighten his traitorous limbs beneath him. After several seconds in which my grip was the only thing holding him up, he managed to stay up with only a little help.

“Good, Vasily. One foot in front of the other.” Heavy hand on his shoulder, I steered him toward the back exit. He nearly fell again as he realized we were headed toward the back alley, but I stabilized him and kept him moving. In the surrounding hush his choked wheezing was the only sound to be heard. He was walking to his death, staggering really, but the end result was the same. He knew it. I knew it. What could fill that silence? What the hell could you possibly say?

“I have a brother,” I stated in soft contemplation as his shoulder spasmed beneath my steadying grasp. “Did you know?” Of course the poor bastard didn’t know. All he knew of me was my role as Konstantin’s shadow. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t talking to him. “His name’s Lukas, after our grandfather.” I pushed at the exit, paying little attention to the buzzing alarm. Passing out of the gloom into a brilliantly sunny Miami morning, I continued with a numb tongue that was flying solo and out of control. “He needs me, Vasily. He needs me alive. Can you understand that?”

From the gasping sobs that vibrated his frame and had him dropping to his hands and knees on the asphalt, I had to assume he didn’t. I couldn’t blame him; I don’t think I would’ve understood either. He was crawling away from me now, the pathetic, terrified son of a bitch, over pavement littered with broken glass that tore at his palms. I could see the blood in a scarlet handprint on a discarded fast-food bag.

“Vasily.” I didn’t remember drawing my gun, but the crosshatched rubber of the grip filled my hand as cool plastic teased my trigger finger. It was the only thing I could feel. My arms, legs, even my face, felt numb and lifeless, but my palm felt the imprint of the gun as if it were a brand, red-hot and marking me for life. “Be still,” I said gently. “It’s over.”

And it was over. Once I put him down, it would be all over . . . for the both of us. But Lukas would live. Lukas would be free. Whether that made it worthwhile depended on your point of view. I raised the 9 mm. It was unfortunate for Vasily that his point of view no longer counted.