Rasputin's Bastards

AWAKENING

“Allah,” Uzimeri began, as the stars still glimmered in the arrow-slit over his head, “is a distant master. This is what I always believed. Fools keep religion alive, but the deity — neglectful. In face of catastrophe, He looks the other way.

“It has been a useful belief in my business. All my life, I have worked for men like Amar Shadak — watching their mistresses, exacting their revenges.

“If I cared for Allah’s opinions — well. The truth is that men like Shadak are Allah in their own eyes. And they do not like other gods.

“This changed for me when the Children came to see me at the pen.

“What,” said Stephen, “does a pen have to do with anything?”

“It is one of Shadak’s great secrets. There is a cove on the Black Sea. Shadak owns land all around it. He’s dug in that land — made a city like the ones dug centuries ago to south. Tunnels and chambers. All the way down to the sea. I don’t know how many centuries it will last.

“But for now, this city has become a treasury; a museum of the Twentieth Century. He has there submarines and gunboats — rooms and rooms filled with small arms and explosives; corridors lined with ammunition and uniforms and deep lockers. He has even got some plutonium and parts of a nuclear device, which we store in a room deeper than the others, awaiting the day…

“This has been my place and my work for the past ten years — keeping and building Shadak’s little arsenal.

“I think when Shadak was younger, he thought he could be a warlord. With the Soviets gone, maybe he could have a private army his own. But no. Who wants to make war with Soviets gone? Some, maybe. But not Shadak. Business is too good for war. So he does his business in Russia and Europe and America. And the armoury is a collection. Not an arsenal.

“That has been fine by me. My men and I have lived well in Shadak’s hidden city. And keeping it secret against the efforts of Shadak’s enemies has proved to be a good challenge. A diversion, yes?

“But I know now that it was never more than a diversion. Oh, how many nights did I walk the deep corridors of the armoury — sit alone in front of the banks of television screens, staring into the caverns full of rockets and firearms and explosives — and ask myself: is this what you have come to, Konstantine? Ah, I was ripe. We all were in Shadak’s armoury. It was no wonder that the Children found us there first.

“I will not forget the night that the first one came to us. For it was I, Konstantine Uzimeri, that she found first. We met on one of those nights, when I was finished with the labyrinth, and had taken myself to the cliffs overlooking the sea. I’d driven a jeep to this point, as I often did, to listen to the waves and breathe the air that was so different from that in the deep tunnels under my feet.

“And so it was that Zhanna, the first child, came to me. Although this one, I will tell you, was barely a child: Zhanna was fully grown — long black hair, eyes black as the midnight sky. Were I younger…

“But I am not younger, and not a fool either — and when a woman, no matter how beautiful, appears unannounced on Amar Shadak’s lands, I don’t think of those things.

“She appeared behind me at the cliff’s edge, so suddenly I nearly shot her. She laughed.

“‘Konstantine Uzimeri,’ she said, ‘what a dull life you lead here in this magnificent treasure-house.’

“‘Identify yourself,’ I said, and when she answered, ‘Zhanna,’ I asked, ‘How do you know me?’

“‘I know you through and through,’ she said. ‘I know your longings and your fears. And of course I know your crimes too.’

“‘You are a friend of Mr. Shadak’s?’ That seemed likely: that this girl was some new mistress of my master’s, out for a tour of his magnificent arsenal. She was not dressed as Amar Shadak likes — no tight designer clothes and thick makeup for this one. She wore the loose coveralls and heavy boots of a worker, her hair tied tight at the back of her skull. Yet he might have broadened his tastes. As I said, he did not visit his collection as much as he used to.

“But Zhanna shook her head no. ‘I have never met Amar Shadak face to face,’ she said.

“‘Did one of the men here bring you on-site?’ I demanded, thinking I had a different sort of problem then. ‘Name him and you might live!’

“‘You know,’ she said, ‘that it’s not so simple.’

“And I had to admit that she was right. I did know that, in the wordless way we come by true knowledge. No one had willingly let her in here.

“‘What do you want?’ I asked.

“‘You have submarines here,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that so?’

“I nodded. It was funny — after a decade of maintaining a cordial lie with the local government officials about the contents of the property here, ten years of hiding Shadak’s treasures from his enemies, all that it took was this black-haired girl Zhanna to ask about the submarines. And I told everything.

“Later, I’d learn lying was pointless with Zhanna in any event. She’d only pluck the information from my mind as easy as a grape from the vine. But I didn’t wish to lie to this girl anyway, no matter her questions.

“Zhanna stepped up to me, took my hand in hers, and together we walked to the elevator house, and descended to the pens.

“Oh, she was delighted with everything she saw: the wide corridors that circled the main armoury; the massive security room, adjoining to the little recreation centre that Shadak let us construct back in 1994; and of course, the pens themselves. She marvelled at the birds that swooped over the conning towers — laughed when I pointed to the high cracks, where a legion of bats slept during daylight.

“‘This is everything I dreamed,’ she said as we looked down at the three bays, lit by floodlights. ‘Though seeing it with my eyes…’

“She grasped the lapel of my coat — her fingers working it, as though feeling its texture as a new thing. ‘… touching with my own fingers. What a magnificent world you have made here, Konstantine!’”

“I shuffled my feet and protested that I had made nothing here.

“‘Say what you will,’ she said. ‘I’m in awe.’

“Here I have a confession to make — one that does not come easily. At that moment, had circumstances not intervened, I think I should have kissed young Zhanna. It was — how shall I say? A great bubbling joy in my middle, mingled with a terrible yearning. I might have kissed her and touched her and—”

“Get on with it,” said Stephen irritably.

“You understand, though — that this was no mere lust I was feeling. It was a Rapture, well and true. And I knew this, soon enough, when I heard the footsteps clanging along the gantry and saw Nochi, who watches the night guard, running toward me. ‘Who is she?’ he demanded angrily as he drew up. And then, as Zhanna turned to him, that anger vanished. And his eyes — which had never been troubled by expression or even a sign of life from the time I’d known him — softened and focused on her.

“‘Who is she?’ he breathed.

“‘Zhanna,’ I said, as though it explained everything.

“She turned back to me as though he wasn’t there. ‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘for showing me the world you made. Let me return the favour, Konstantine — and show you mine.’

“And then — then my young friend — my world changed forever.

“A holiness — not what you think — a holiness came over me then. The fullness of the Rapture that is the Children’s gift to us. The world brightened for a moment, as though God were coming to me through the firmament of the earth. I felt — a sense of belonging — a sense of rightness, can you understand that?”

“No,” said Stephen.

“Then I weep for you, my boy. You have never experienced joy. Can you even dream of it, I wonder?”

Stephen stared at him. “Go on,” he said.

“Very well. The important thing is that over this moment, I saw my life spread before me. I inhabited a space of time in it that I can only describe as perfection. To begin with, it was frightening; a dull tingling in my limbs, as though they’d rested still too long. Sensation abandoned me, as I felt my soul suck back to a needle along my spine. And then — are you listening, boy? — then that needle fired out of me, through the top of my skull. And for an instant, I hovered there, in the steel rafters of the submarine pen. It was a sensation of weightlessness — swimming, shall we say? The fear vanished, as the lightness overcame me. And at once — at once I shot upward again, through the rock and earth, and into the starry night sky over the Black Sea.”

“You were dream-walking, you fucker,” whispered Stephen. But Uzimeri didn’t seem to hear him. He was lost in his own tale.

“She beckoned me, and we rose together — through thinning air and into the hard vacuum of space, yes? I saw the world spread below me — the moon at my shoulder, a great grey stone in the sky — and stars all around me. And so it was that I saw enlightenment. And the Rapture overtook me.”

“Dream-walking,” said Stephen, shaking his head. “You.”

“Dream-walking, Rapture. You call it as you will. All that matters is that it brought me to a realization., I knew that now, whatever Shadak might do, this pen and the men within it, and yes — me — belonged to Zhanna. It was her wishes — no longer those of Amar Shadak — that I would die to fulfill.

“I blinked and coughed, and said something or other. Zhanna placed her hand on my arm, and with her other hand pointed down into the bay.

“‘Show me that one,’ she said. I followed her finger down to the middle bay. That is where the Project Cobra submarine rests. It is an ancient diesel-powered 641 Attack Submarine. You Americans called them Foxtrots.”

“I know shit about submarines,” yawned Stephen.

“A Foxtrot,” said Uzimeri. “Shadak spends a fortune keeping his Foxtrot running. You know, if I were ever more objective about it, I’d have told him years ago to scuttle the thing. The Soviets stopped using them they were so old. But there was something honest about them — in their simplicity. Like keeping an old U-boat.

“Zhanna — Zhanna saw it too.

“‘We’re going to Heaven in this,’ she said as we climbed onto its deck for the first time.”

You sure she didn’t mean we’re gonna die in it? Stephen pursed his lips and let Uzimeri continue. The sick old bastard’s voice was thickening more with religion with every word. That was how this story was going to go, and if Stephen wanted to hear how it came out, he’d just have to put up with it.

“You don’t know shit about submarines — that’s what you say, right? So I’ll tell you then: the Foxtrot submarine is very small. Inside, it’s not much wider than a bus. And the walls and ceilings are all lined with cement, and pipes, and valves. It’s noisy. Runs off diesel fuel when it’s going near the surface and great banks of batteries when it goes deep. If I were a kid, I’d run screaming from the place once I got inside. I don’t think you would last more than a few minutes there before you went crazy. But when Zhanna climbed down into the control room, she just nodded.

“‘This is in good running order, yes?’ she asked as she ran her fingers along the cool iron piping. We had just painted the valves — Soviet Navy standard red and blue — and the place still smelled of it.

“‘Of course,’ I replied. “She is always kept ready to run.”

“‘Does your rescue hatch function?’ she asked.

“‘For what good it would do,’ I replied. You see, Foxtrots are equipped with a special hatch that allows the submarine to dock underwater. All well and good — if there were anything else still in service that used the same couplings. There is not, alas. The Foxtrot went out of service nearly twenty years ago. I explained this to Zhanna, but she waved it away before I could finish.

“‘It functions, though?’

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We take good care of her.’

“We spent hours touring the inside of the submarine. She did not speak — for the most part, she simply looked. Very closely, as though she were taking photographs with her eyes. With my assistance, she climbed into one of the torpedo-room bunks, and lay on the thin mattress for nearly a half-hour, before climbing down.

“‘This is familiar,’ she said finally. ‘And good for us. I’m finished for now.’

“We climbed back up through the conning tower, as we had entered. But when we had entered, the pen was all but deserted. Now, it was filled. Every man in Shadak’s armoury was there, standing as though at attention along the edge of the dock. That would have been enough — but it was also the water at the mouth of the cave. Someone had opened the sea gate, and let a half-dozen small boats inside. There were old fishing boats; a little sailboat; a small inboard motor boat. These were filled too — with one or two adults; but for the most part, with children.

“This strangeness snapped me briefly out of my reverie. I demanded to know what was what.

“‘These,’ she said, ‘are some of my family. Not all. There are many, many more, who are to be with Amar Shadak in Belgrade. And we must take this beautiful submarine, to fetch still more. But these are many.’”