Rasputin's Bastards

THE HONEST THIEF

The two of them sat still in the dark. Leo Montassini rubbed his chin and peered over the rocks.

There were two guards on the main gate to town’s greenhouse. The gate was high, sheltered under a peak of shingled roof. Underneath, a pool of fluorescent light made everything sick green. The pair of them stood underneath that light. They stared down the slope at the milling town. One was big — he looked like he ran one of the fishing boats that worked out of this place: deeply tanned, with muscle-banded forearms, and a broad red forehead underneath a baseball cap two sizes too small. He wore big black boots that laced up to his calves, which themselves bulged out the top like round river-rocks. The other one was small but only by comparison to the first. He was still respectably put together and looked like he could fight. Montassini pulled back down behind the rock where they were hiding and reported this to Alexei.

“The big one,” said Alexei, without looking, “is Makar Trolynka. He’s got a scaling knife tucked into his belt. He has never used it on a man and would hesitate to do so with us. He prefers his fists. His brother Oleg — who’s standing beside him — is another matter. He’s not armed, but if it comes to it, he’ll take anything and use it. Oleg won’t care if he kills you.”

Montassini looked at Alexei, and choked back the questions: like: How in fuck did this guy know who these people were, how they were related, and how they liked to dust it up?

Uncomfortable questions that would lead to uncomfortable places. He let Alexei continue:

“Of course, there are two others looking after the west side of the structure. They’ve got rifles, and they’ll come around quickly if there’s any commotion.”

“Why not just avoid commotion,” said Montassini, “and find another way in? What about through the roof? It’s a fucking greenhouse.”

“This is not the movies. We fall through the roof and cut ourselves to bits.” Alexei shook his head firmly. “Other doors? No. No other way in.”

“Smash a window?”

“No.”

Alexei was firm as he could be — but Montassini wasn’t going to give up. He tried reason one more time.

“Wouldn’t attacking these guys just alert her?”

“Her?”

“That Babushka chick.”

“Ah.” Alexei appeared to consider. “The chick. No.”

“There has got to be another way in.”

“Those,” said Alexei, “are not Babushka’s guards. They won’t alert her.”

“Not Babushka’s. Who the fuck’s are they then?”

“The Koldun’s,” he said.

“What?”

“Never mind. Pay attention. This is what we’re going to do,” said Alexei. “This will work.”

Montassini sighed.

“Fuck, man. You just know that, don’t you?”

“Alexei just knows that.”

“Right. Alexei.”

It was always Alexei. Never me. Or I.

He’d worked with a guy who’d done that back in ’92. Vinnie Capelli. Vinnie was working the Port Authority, helping out Gepetto Bucci’s capo Milos Spinazzi. Every time Vinnie was seriously pissed at some guy, he’d say, “Vinnie is seriously pissed. What does Vinnie do when he’s pissed?” And then he’d start in on the guy, doing what Vinnie did which usually involved a sock full of quarters. Montassini guessed that saying “Vinnie is seriously pissed” was marginally scarier than saying “I am seriously pissed” — but it struck him as phony shit, and phony shit irritated Leo Montassini like nothing else. It didn’t surprise him one bit when it turned out that Vinnie was running a heroin deal without Spinazzi’s blessing.

But it was different here.

After a few days among these weird Russian fucks he was starting to understand how they worked — how they could one minute be a guy from the South Bronx who worked at the Trump Towers and the next be singing “Ach Natascha” with a bunch of strangers on a bus. Like they had a whole set of personalities in their guts and could just swap them at will.

At someone’s will, anyway.

Montassini thought he was getting good at spotting it. He’d spotted it immediately in that weird museum, when the Rapture had taken over, and Alexei Kilodovich had started speaking about himself in the third person.

He thought he might be able to spot it now. He looked back around the rock.

“Are those two—”

“Sleepers?”

“Quit finishing my thoughts for me.” Montassini hushed himself. “Yeah.”

“Those two are sleepers,” said Alexei.

“Like you.”

“Once. I am a dream-walker now. Different.”

“Whatever. Those two are the zombies like down by the boats.”

They had just made their way through a crowd of about a thousand zombies who were milling around New Pokrovskoye harbour. Montassini hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that every time he looked in one of their eyes, he was looking at the same person — that every time one of them looked at him, that person was just holding the same stare as the last; through different eyes. Montassini jerked a thumb in the direction of the greenhouse. “First time one of them sees us, they’ll tell the rest of them in a second.”

Alexei shook his head. “Not now,” he said. “These ones are operating on implanted program. The program was not implanted by Babushka. It was implanted by — her lover, who is betraying her and knows her well enough to succeed for a while. The Babushka is concentrating down at the harbour. She is still growing — building herself in the minds of her sleepers. Our worries start if Babushka realizes what is going on here, and has sleepers nearby who are — awake.”

Montassini nodded again, more slowly this time, as he worked it out. “So we got to put the sleepers to sleep.”

“Right.”

“How do we do that?”

“You are the expert.”

“The—” Montassini’s mouth hung open. No words now for the questions that cascaded from that. This fucking KGB agent who’d probably broken into Cheyenne Mountain in his day — who’d disarmed Montassini like a cat whacking a mouse — who was on the lam from Amar fucking Shadak.

What the fuck did Montassini know to make him an expert? That he could hear voices when he stuck his head into a U.F.O. in Manhattan — that he found another U.F.O. here in fuckin’ Russianville Canada?

“I’ve never done this before.” Alexei looked nervous. “Alexei has. But he can’t come now.”

“You’re fuckin’ crazy, whoever you are,” Montassini muttered, then pushed himself up to take another look at the two of them at the door. They were more like statuary than men — staring out into the dark with unseeing eyes —

— looking across a black ocean.

Montassini shook his head.

“Four guys altogether,” he said, thinking as he looked. “Could be worse.”

Gibson stood still and listened. It didn’t take long before he heard the noise again — the rustling of leaves as someone stepped through. There was a subtle shift in the shadows.

“John,” said a voice.

Holden glared into the dark. But he was relaxed now. Back on top.

“Stop calling me that,” he said.

A figure stepped out in front of him from behind a row of tomato plants. He wore a long coat. His hair was pulled back in a ponytail. His beard was white. His name was Koldun, and he was as close to a host as Gibson had been able to find in this town.

The Koldun shrugged. “John’s your name,” he said. “John Kaye. It upsets you to hear it.”

“Call me Holden,” said Gibson.

“Of course. Bad memories for John Kaye, hmm?”

“If you say so.”

“Makes it difficult to sleep.”

“I got to piss.”

“No you don’t.”

It was true. Gibson didn’t have to piss. He was panicked and dislocated was all. Like a kid with a bad dream. He glared at the Koldun. He wasn’t going to say that out loud.

The Koldun looked at him across the darkness. “I’ve done my best to help you,” he said. “Twice now you’ve messed it up.”

Gibson looked away. The Koldun didn’t have to say messed up what because now Gibson’s short-term memory was working fine and he knew exactly what he’d messed up.

Earlier in the day, the Koldun had told him where Alexei, the traitor Russian, was resting. Told him Alexei had been doing nothing but trying to figure out a way to murder Holden Gibson and fuck Heather. Gibson hadn’t been able to get to Alexei for days while he was lying out cold in the bathhouse — he was under some kind of protection as long as he was there. But when he came to?

“Fair game,” the Koldun had told him then.

“He was fair game,” said the Koldun now. “You didn’t manage it though.”

Gibson glared at him.

The Koldun shrugged. “I’m not giving you shit, John. It was my mistake in attempting it. Leaving it to you. You’re a mess. You can’t even remember your own name.”

“Holden Gibson.” Gibson blinked. “Holden fuckin’ Gibson. So here we are. I fucked up. Couldn’t kill him. But that Russian — he’s more than he seems, isn’t he?”

“That’s why I needed him dead.”

Gibson narrowed his eyes.

“Why didn’t you do it yourself?”

“Because—” the Koldun licked his lips. “Because I would have been observed.”

“And I wouldn’t?”

The Koldun didn’t answer and he didn’t have to as far as Gibson was concerned.

“You were fuckin’ setting me up, weren’t you?”

“You know that’s wrong,” said the Koldun.

“I don’t know anything.”

The Koldun shrugged. “That’s not true. You know who you are, John.”

Gibson massaged his knuckles. “I could fuckin’ kill you right now. Set me up. Fucker.”

The Koldun went on. “You know your name is John Kaye. And being as that is your name — you should have known better than to listen to her.”

“Her?”

“When she contacted you. With the children.”

“What do you mean?” Gibson bristled. “You talking about the phone call? These kids? I’d have been fucked if I hadn’t agreed to it. It was the best fuckin’ deal to come along the pipe in a year.” These children — they’re talented. They’ll make you rich for as long as you’re alive. Come get them. “More than a year. A fuckin’ lifetime.”

“Yes. It seemed that way for all of us. But we fell into her trap. As we have all in the past.”

“What the fuck do you mean?”

The Koldun threw his hands in the air theatrically. “Oh. I forgot. I am not talking to John Kaye. I am talking to Holden Gibson. You have no idea what happened to you that night.”

“Fuck you,” said Gibson. He turned to walk off. Brought here by Babushka. Fuck off. He was here because of a deal that he’d made with a woman on a telephone to bring some very talented young people — that was how she called them — very talented young people — into the fold. The woman was tough — she made a lot of fun of Walt Disney for some reason — and that pissed Gibson off for some reason —

For fuck’s sake, it was supposed to be frightening: the Devil; shrieking winged demons, the souls of the dead, lakes of pitch — that big mothering Satan in the middle.

Really, she’d said. Fantasia? Why don’t you just have the mouse send broomsticks after us? That is every bit as terrifying as this scribble of a demon you’ve made of yourself.

Was that all it took to bring down John Kaye? Just a little doubt? Mockery?

“Bitch,” said Holden Gibson.

“Shh,” said the Koldun. “You don’t want her to hear.”

Gibson turned around. Now he was feeling tears in his eyes. “Bitch,” he said again.

The Koldun shook his head sadly. “She had very little to do with why you are the way you are, you know. That responsibility fell to others — afterwards. But without her? John Kaye would still be the man that he was, I think.”

“Ball-busting bitch,” said Gibson.

The Koldun frowned and looked to a spot behind Gibson.

“Shit,” he said. “Someone’s coming.”

“Who the fuck would be coming?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The Koldun, Vasili Borovich, reached into his coat. He produced a machine pistol and handed it to Gibson. Then pulled another one out and kept it for himself.

“What the fuck?”

“The children,” he said, his voice flat. “We have to take them — before it becomes any worse.”