The City's son

CHAPTER 45

For a horrifying moment Beth flew, feeling the absence of gravity sickeningly in her stomach. Then she smacked hard into the concrete, three feet short of the ramp.

‘Argh!’ Her nose and lips felt puffy and stung. She rolled and came to her feet crouched, spear ready, poised for attack.

‘Sorry! Sorry!’ a familiar voice said, ‘but Tsarina was about to self-kill. Was first thing could think of.’ Hunks of brick and concrete tumbled off a dusty tarp, revealing a figure in a threadbare greatcoat who wiped away the grey camo make-up from his face as he sat up. He pulled his beanie hat from his pocket, crammed it onto his erratic hair and fixed Beth with a hopeful grin. ‘Sorry!’ he said again cheerfully.

‘Victor?’ It was one surprise too many. The last of Beth’s cool fell tinkling into fragments on the floor

‘Da.’

‘Where did-? How did-? How the hell did you get ahead of me? ’

‘Well, back in Volgagrad was-’

‘Don’t tell me you were on the Siberian Olympic sprint team; I won’t believe it. I know you can’t run as fast as I can, so how?’

Victor looked embarrassed. ‘I take — you know — I take underground train.’

‘You took the tube?’ For some reason Beth found this deeply shocking.

‘Da, why not? I am old man now. Just because Tsarina go on foot-’

‘With what? You don’t have any money.’

‘Ticket collector, he from Old Country. He ask for ticket; I give him old Moscow greeting.’ He beamed.

Beth stared out at him sceptically over folded arms.

‘An old Moscow greeting? Did this greeting involve wristlocks, groin punches, chokeholds or anything else you might have learned in the Soviet secret police?’

‘Old Moscow greeting,’ Victor repeated. His smiling face shone with sincerity. ‘We understand each other very well.’

Beth stared at him, fury and fright swelling in her. She shook her head firmly. ‘No way. No way. The Thames’ll run with baboon sweat before I let this happen. Turn around, Victor, get out of here. This — it’s not your fight.’

Was this how Fil had felt, all those times he’d told her to leave? This vertigo of affection and gratitude and the terrible knowledge that if this person you cared about got hurt, it would be your fault?

‘I’m not owing another one like that,’ she muttered. ‘I can’t. Go back, Victor.’

The friendly grin retreated into Victor’s beard and Beth jumped back in shock as he spat at her feet. ‘ Not my fight? ’ he snarled. ‘Who are you, to say what is and not my fight? Kabul was my fight, and Tashkent, and Ossetia. You talk of owing? I owe!’ He thumped his chest. ‘I lost boys, shining boys, shattered to little pieces by the monster you hunt. I owe them all.’ He looked at her, his eyes full of a gutting disappointment. ‘And you too, remember? I said, “I make sure you no get too horribly killed.” Was no lie. I never lie.’

Beth exhaled hard, ‘You don’t understand. People who follow me, they get hurt — hurt bad. They die.’

Victor nodded solemnly. ‘I know. They die because you are bad general.’ He ignored the look Beth gave him and went on, ‘Is not to be shamed of. I am pretty bad general too, but even I can tell you, charging headlong into face of superior enemy is stupider than poking adder with your own nose.’ He looked pointedly at the ramp Beth had been about to run up. ‘Frontal assault: very bad strategy. We try in Afghanistan, only mujaheddin have landmines.’ He mimed an explosion with his hands. ‘Arms, legs, heads, kneecaps, blood everywhere, like whores on a vor.’

He clapped an arm around Beth’s shoulders, expelling a cloud of dust from his coat. His anger had evaporated. Now his voice had a fatherly tone. ‘If, on other hand, we make reconnaissance, like good little Spetsnaz, if we arrive early and do camouflage, then we might see interesting things.’

He squatted a couple of feet from the hoardings and gripped a slab of concrete. With a stream of heavily accented invective he dragged it aside, revealing a jagged hole in the ground leading down into darkness. ‘Like private back door, where wire zmeya drags bodies from; that kind of interesting.’ He sat and dangled his legs into the hole, kicking his feet like a small boy. The edges of his vast moustache twitched upwards as he regarded Beth fondly. ‘You are like granddaughter to me, so I tell you secret,’ he said. ‘I am scared of dark — no, really, do not laugh. Dark and small places, since little boy. Back then I think Kobolds squat in the little places, to eat my little flesh.’

His grin widened. ‘Who knows, maybe they still do.’ He gave himself a tiny push and dropped out of sight below the streets.

Beth kissed her teeth. ‘Only a bloody Russian could think their fairy-tales were reassuring,’ she muttered, then seized the spear and dived into the darkness.