Rasputin's Bastards

THERE ARE NO GUILTY PEOPLE

Tom Wu was fifty-three. Jean was twenty-two. Standing amid the lilies on the roof of his penthouse, thirty-seven storeys above Hong Kong harbour, Tom Wu stared at her, tears running down cheeks beneath eyes weakened with injury, waiting for an explanation. Jean Kontos-Wu shrugged: what could she say? He had the goods — photographs of her and Amar Shadak, “the filthy Turk” — both naked, her legs wrapped around his torso, smiling into his eyes as he rammed himself into her. He had the bank records, which showed the withdrawals she’d made over the past month and a half — the massive transfers of cash from Hong Kong to New York to Switzerland. He didn’t have the shipping manifests yet, that showed the unidentified materials that were moving from Kowloon through the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, up through the Suez and into Turkey. He also didn’t have time.

So Mrs. Kontos-Wu shrugged.

“You have betrayed us,” said Tom Wu and that was all. The chemical she’d insinuated into his drink took effect, and his eyes went wide and his heart stopped and he died.

John Tournier was the head of a consortium in New York that owned the Emissary Hotel. He was sixty-eight. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was twenty-five. He didn’t look at Mrs. Kontos-Wu with anything like surprise when his time came and title to the hotel went.

Ian Forrester was forty-one. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was twenty-six. His eyes met hers through four inches of churning water in a hot tub as his lungs filled up with water and the files on his computer shuffled from hard drive to diskette.

Lisa Churley was twenty-nine. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was twenty-seven. It took two jugs of acid to get rid of her remains. In addition to her notebook and tape recorder, her purse held a picture of a heavy-set balding man and a little boy grinning like idiots in front of what looked like the Grand Canyon. Mrs. Kontos-Wu threw it into the bath with everything else. The man stepping off the turboprop could have been anywhere from twenty-five to forty. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was twenty-eight. Brain and bone spread across the adobe mural in the little airport and Mrs. Kontos-Wu unscrewed the barrel of the rifle, pulled off the stock and folded it into her carry-on bag.

Elmer Bergensen was in his thirties. Jerri Bergensen was a little younger but not much. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was thirty-four. They had rescued her from the ocean and asked a few too many questions. And they were dead.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu blinked. She was sitting in the mess of the submarine. Ilyich Chenko and Tanya Pitovovich were there too. Chenko touched her hand compassionately. Mrs. Kontos-Wu shook her head. Twitched. Her eyes were damp with tears. Her face was hot. She inhaled a mouthful of salty snot. She’d been bawling.

“How long have I been here?” she asked.

“Not long,” said Tanya.

“Perhaps a quarter hour,” said Chenko.

Uzimeri stepped into her field of view. “Has the Babushka finally blessed you?” he asked.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu laughed weakly. “No,” she said. “No more Babushka.”

“Well however you’ve come to it,” said Tanya, “you are back to yourself.”

“It’s not about me,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu.

“Hmm,” said Chenko. “Sounds as though you’re reaching an epiphany.”

“Be quiet a moment. She’s working it through.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu frowned. It wasn’t about her. At least not her victimization. It was true that Fyodor Kolyokov had lied to her and imprisoned her. But the truth was that it was her hands that drove a beer bottle down the throat of a kind and innocent woman — whose only sin was helping a stranger lost at sea. Kolyokov’s programming might let her rationalize away responsibility. But it was an escape hatch.

“Where is Stephen?” she said finally.

“He is back,” said Uzimeri.

“Where?”

“Where the Children sleep,” said Chenko. “They found him in the station. Now they are finding out how it is he betrayed them.”

“How he betrayed them.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu stood up. “Excuse me,” she said.

“Where are you going?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu didn’t answer. She gingerly stepped around the passengers, ducked her head, and half-ran down the narrow spinal corridor to aft.

She met a guard along the way. He smiled at her.

“Mrs. Kontos-Wu,” he said.

“Alexei?” Mrs. Kontos-Wu couldn’t say how she knew. Maybe something in the eye. “Are you dream-walking here now too?”

The Romanian made a face. “You too?” he said, and reached around to restrain Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “Sorry,” she said, and lashed out with her elbow. The guard made a chuffing sound and collapsed, and Mrs. Kontos-Wu gave herself mild shit. The only dream-walkers in here that she knew about for certain were the Children, and they were also the only ones with reliable instincts that way. Jean Kontos-Wu was a person of this earth. She had to rely on other advantages.

She used those advantages to take down two more Romanians and lock a third in an empty stateroom before she made it halfway back. By the time she’d reached the officers’ quarters, they were waving guns around. Unconvincingly: the Children knew better than to start firing handguns in a submarine.

“Why are you doing this?” said one, who appeared with a short-barrelled shotgun levelled at her midriff. “What is this Kilodovich thing?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu sighed. “You need to talk to Alexei Kilodovich,” she said. “I can’t do it for you. But he’s—”

The Romanian gasped, and his eyes sprang open. As though he were a computer, and someone had just rebooted him.

The gun lowered, and Mrs. Kontos-Wu gingerly took hold of the barrel. The Romanian let go of the gun.

He muttered a long, incomprehensible string of Romanian.

And then, he began to cry.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu hefted the shotgun and wondered idly if it were loaded with buckshot — and if it were, just how safe it would have been to have fired it. She shivered: she might actually have been at risk.

Mrs. Kontos-Wu shrugged it off. She elbowed past the Romanian and into the wood-panelled corridor.

There were no more Romanians here — just a narrow, dim corridor. The submarine bonged and creaked around her. Partway down, she stopped as a shape emerged from one of the doors.

It was a kid. He looked about fourteen years old. He was fat — as Mrs. Kontos-Wu looked at him, she was amazed to think: This kid looks like Fyodor Kolyokov must have; even more amazed about what that observation implied.

The kid looked at Mrs. Kontos-Wu with wide, nervous eyes. He mumbled something incoherent. Then he hurried across the hallway to another stateroom. Mrs. Kontos-Wu shrugged and continued on. She glanced into that door, saw the fat kid and another boy, same dark hair, same wide eyes, staring out at her.

So that’s what they look like.

For everything that had happened, Mrs. Kontos-Wu thought this might be the first time that she’d gotten a good look at the Children of City 512.