Politika

SIX

Dotting the banks of a waterway the Russians call the Amur, and the Chinese refer to as Heilongjiang, or the Black Dragon River, the handful of dwellings that compose the village of Sikachi-Alyan housed a population of indigenous Nanai tribesmen too small to be measured on any census, and more than glad to remain overlooked. Without a single hotel or restaurant, the settlement lay well off the major shipping routes, and drew few outsiders besides the scholars who occasionally arrived to inspect the thousand-year-old petroglyphs carved into the boulders scattered along its muddy shoreline.

This very isolation — and its proximity to the border — had made it an ideal place for the group to meet in secrecy.

Their rented wooden fishing trawler had left Khabarovsk at sunset and cruised some forty kilometers down-river through the gathering dusk, its half-century-old Kermath engines clanking and wheezing, the running lights at its bow gleaming like tiny red eyes in the mist and drizzle. It had been stripped to the handrails of all gear. There was no crew aboard. Its cubbyhole cockpit had room enough for just a single occupant, a Nanai wheelman who spoke little Russian and had been told to remain on deck as a strict condition of his payment.

Now, moored in the black offshore waters flowing past the village landings, the stout little vessel’s engine was silent. Behind the clamped door of the hold, its passengers sat on transom seats that had been set down along the bulkhead, bracing uncomfortably against the heave and sway of the boat.

All but one of them were men. The Russians, Romual Possad and Yuri Vostov, had arrived on separate commercial flights from Moscow earlier that day. Teng Chou had traveled a slower, more exhausting route, flying from Beijing to the airfield in Harbin, then riding through the night in the backseat of a military jeep. Having reached Fuyuan at 7 A.M., he’d gone directly to the river station and taken the hydrofoil to Khabarovsk on the Russian side of the Amur, where he had been met by members of the Chinese consulate three hours later. The little sleep he’d gotten in their guest quarters had hardly refreshed him.

Seated opposite him, Gilea Nastik, the only woman in the group, silently cursed the chill and dampness. In this part of the world, she thought with disgust, there were no seasonal transitions — it was summer one day, and winter the next. Her wiry, desert-tanned body had not been bred for such a miserable climate.

“Well, it’s up to you,” she said in Russian, tiring of Possad’s indecisiveness. He hadn’t uttered a word in almost ten minutes. “Will you obtain the approval of your superiors in the ministry, or are we wasting our time?”

He gnawed on his bottom lip.

“It depends,” he said. “Make no mistake, I see how it could work, providing we have the money. And a reliable network of contacts.”

She stared at him, the skin tightening over her cheekbones, giving her face a sharp, almost predatory appearance. Then she looked down at her hands, shaking her head.

“I have already guaranteed unlimited funding. And the necessary materials,” Teng Chou said in a clipped tone. “You should know I am as good as my word.”

Possad swung his gaze over his shoulder to Vostov.

“Your people in the United States… you’re certain they can be trusted?”

Vostov struggled to conceal his irritation; Possad’s thinly veiled superiority filled him with a dislike bordering on hatred. From the lowliest bureaucrats to the most highly ranked officials, government men were all hypocritical bastards, never looking in the mirror, as if they knew nothing of self-interest, greed, and betrayal.

“If everyone sticks to the bargain, there won’t be any problems,” he said. “Pure and simple.”

Possad worried his lip some more, tasting his own blood. The moment he’d met these three, he had felt as if he’d gone plunging off a bridge into a bottomless chasm. But he’d been given his instructions. What choice did he have except to follow them?

Communiques from the delegation in Washington indicated that Starinov had struck a quick agreement with the President, and that a majority of congressmen seemed inclined to give it their support. A hunger relief effort spearheaded by America would be under way before too long. And the Moscow press was already hailing Starinov as a political savior. He had used precious food aid to enhance his image and shuffle his critics into the background. And soon he would use it to sell the Russian people on more of his never-ending concessions to the West.

Only a drastic action would change the course that events had taken, Possad thought. And if his allies in plotting that action were to be a thug who had made his fortune through narcotics, theft, and vice; an Indonesian arms dealer fronting for Beijing; and a soulless woman who dealt in blood and carnage… well, having been driven into hell by necessity, what choice was there, indeed, but to consort with demons?

“All right,” he said at last. “The plan has teeth, and I’m prepared to advise the minister to go ahead with it. But there’s one other thing—”

“I know the game we are playing, as my team’s action in Kaliningrad last night should prove,” Gilea said. She stared at him, her eyes dark and bright as chips of polished onyx. “Rest assured, blame will be assigned to the right party. Mr. Chou and I have already exchanged some thoughts as to how that might be done.”

Chou bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, but said nothing.

They were silent awhile in the cramped, unheated hold. The boat rocked, water sloshing rhythmically against the bottom of the hull. Rusty fastenings creaked and squealed.

“Too bad this rattletrap is without creature comforts,” Vostov said. “Right now, we should be opening a bottle of champagne, and drinking a toast to our shared fortunes.”

“And the coming of the new year,” Gilea said.

A grin crept across Vostov’s fleshy lips.

“Yes,” he said. “That would be most appropriate.”

Possad glanced at them and felt his stomach tense. There was, he supposed, still very much for him to learn about human cruelty.

After a moment he shifted his eyes to the smeared circle of glass that was the compartment’s single porthole, needing to look away, to remind himself that the world he had always known was still out there, that he had not entirely left it behind…

But he saw nothing outside the window except blackness.