Rasputin's Bastards

THE IDIOT

The bald man with the van Dyke beard visited Alexei next, but he was only there to bring a mug of chicken soup and a bundle of clothes, and didn’t stay to chat half as long as the last two visitors had. He asked if Alexei remembered anything yet — which suggested that Heather hadn’t spoken of their earlier encounter — and when Alexei said no, he shrugged. “We cleaned your clothes, but there’s still a pretty bad bloodstain on the shirt. So I loaned you one of my sweaters. Take a walk around when you feel like it — the weather’s cleared up so it’s not too bad, and we’ve got a few hours yet.”

Alexei wrapped his blanket over his shoulders and sat up, cradling the soup mug in his hands. It was instant soup from a powder, but still quite hot, and when he swallowed the first mouthful it felt remarkable going down.

A few hours until what, precisely? he wanted to ask.

“It is like coming back from the dead,” he said with some relish — but the bald man didn’t appear to get the joke. He gave Alexei a funny look.

“My name’s James,” he said, on his way out. “Take a walk when you feel up to it.”

The soup gave him a kind of strength, but he still took a moment before reaching over to the stack of clothes and dressing himself. Really, this amnesia game would have to end sometime — if he was a true professional, he would never have attempted it in the first place. Just told the people here what had happened, radioed to the coast guard and told them about the possible homicide on the Romanians’ ship. He finished the soup, slurping back the noodles at the bottom of the cup and swallowing them whole, and set it down on the floor at his ankles. The game was childish, he knew. Pointless, too.

Sooner or later, he would have to stop remaking himself like this.

Alexei unfolded the clothes. The trousers were a mess — they were dress pants, and really should have been dry-cleaned. At least they hadn’t shrunk. The bald man’s sweater was really a bright red sweatshirt, and it had a big logo with the dark blue words SUBSCRIBE! underneath an arch of pale blue laminate. The whole thing looked to Alexei like a monochrome rainbow. When he put it on, he noted with distaste it was also a size too small for him. It stretched across his shoulders, the sleeves rode up his forearms, and the collar grabbed around his neck like a noose. He reached under the pillow and slipped the asp into his pants-pocket. He slipped his bare feet into his shoes and made his way outside.

Sooner or later, Alexei would have to tell someone — besides the woman Heather, who seemed altogether too willing to keep his secret for him — what had happened on the Romanians’ yacht. Mrs. Kontos-Wu might be dead. He might have failed, the drama might be over. But she might have simply been wounded, or still be alive on the boat, on her way to God knows where. If that were the case, his little game was his real failure.

Comfort is the torturer’s first tool.

And sex is the second, and ill-fitting sweatshirts is the third, and a misguided appeal to duty is the fourth, thought Alexei. Score one for Kolyokov.

The cabin opened onto a narrow corridor that was lit only dimly. It felt as though the boat’s motor was directly underneath this spot, because the corridor hummed and vibrated in a way that tickled up through Alexei’s shinbones — like the feather of unease that tickled up through his middle. That made him behave as though he were a prisoner. Or an infiltrator.

Alexei passed by a steep, narrow set of stairs, and he started to climb them. But he abruptly changed his mind. He wasn’t a prisoner here, and he wasn’t an infiltrator — at least not yet. He was still Gibson’s guest.

But Gibson…

Like Heather said, he was a prick.

And he did things to little kids.

When they’d fished Alexei out of the ocean, an instinct had told him to keep his mouth shut. Now, that same instinct kept him from climbing the stairs onto the main deck.

The corridor bent here, and Alexei continued along it. It seemed to bend back in a U shape, so that Alexei was looking at another row of cabins. At the end of it, a door stood ajar.

Alexei started down the hallway. It wasn’t until he made it to the edge of the door, and began to peer around it, that he realized he’d been rolling his feet so as to make no noise and had extended the asp so that it hid ready behind his thigh. Training never leaves us, he thought, as he looked into the empty closet. He was about to turn away, when that training nudged him back, and he noticed the faint light coming from cracks around the edge of the closet’s far wall.

Alexei went forward, and pushed open the hidden door.

“Shit,” he mouthed, looking into the room.

It was a cabin, maybe three times as big as the one they’d put Alexei in. But its portholes had been blacked out, and it was lined with white pine bunk beds and plain foam mattresses. At the far end, there was a little chemical toilet, and a watercooler just like the one outside Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s office in New York. It made a belching sound as an enormous air bubble shot to the top of the tank. Alexei looked at the bunk beds — he counted fifteen, and he wouldn’t have been able to stretch out comfortably on any one of them. They were far too short for a grown man.

But the size was perfect for little kids.

“Shit,” Alexei whispered.

This room was a smuggler’s hideaway.

For smuggling children.

Before anyone could show up to make trouble for him, Alexei returned the door to the slightly-ajar position he’d found it in, and made his way back to the stairs. When he got there, the asp was back in his pocket. From above, he could smell the salt and rot of the sea air. Still putting it all together in his head, he climbed. Feigning amnesia, Alexei thought, was the smartest thing he had done in recent memory.

“You speak Russian?”

Alexei stood on the yacht’s prow, watching Holden Gibson approach. He had been standing alone there for a few minutes, watching the waves break against the hull, occasionally looking back across the deck, or glancing out to the horizon, which was grey and featureless under the thick cloud. He was thinking about what to do next — find a radio, try and contact the coast guard, call in the Marines on this fucking child smuggler, and let them know about Mrs. Kontos-Wu at the same time — when he spotted Holden Gibson. Alexei waited for the big man to make his way across the mist-washed deck.

“Of course you speak Russian,” said Holden. He was wearing a raincoat like Heather had worn last night, and he stopped not a foot away from Alexei. “I think I understand where my instinct is taking me now,” he continued. “It could be either way — telling me I should just kill you and dump the body in the drink. Or that you might be useful. I think maybe I shouldn’t kill you. I think it’s telling me to offer you some work.”

“What kind of work?”

Holden threw up his hands and rolled his eyes. “Christ’s sake, boy — what is with all the questions? Look, just tell me — do you or don’t you want to work? Because we are going to be there soon and I want to hedge my bets, all right? Now are you remembering things any better?”

“No,” said Alexei.

“Good. Do you remember your Russian?”

“Da,” said Alexei.

“What the fuck’s that?”

“Russian for Yes.”

“Russian. Good.” Holden’s hands came together and he rubbed them, as though warming them in the spray. “Now here’s the job. I’m meeting some people — we’re meeting real soon — and I think some of them will be speaking Russian. That is the sense I get. But I don’t speak Russian, and they know I don’t speak Russian. Got that?”

“Yes,” said Alexei.

“Good. Now. These Russians, they don’t know about you, and they don’t know you speak Russian. So the thing I want you to do is listen — keep your mouth shut, but listen — and when they’re talking Russian, remember what they say and tell me that. Can you do that? Or does your fucking head hurt too bad? Because I don’t have to tell you — you’re dead weight on this boat right now.” He looked at Alexei. “You’re ballast. You know what ballast is?”

“Yes,” said Alexei. “I know what ballast is.”

“And?” Holden Gibson’s hands made fists, and he jammed them into the pockets of his raincoat. “And?”

“I can do this for you.”

“Good.” Holden grinned at Alexei, his teeth improbably white. They were the teeth of a healthy young man, stolen in the night and hammered into the gums of a sick old monster’s head. “Good. This is a good idea I’ve come up with, isn’t it?”

Alexei pushed his own hands into his pockets, and felt the asp in one of them. He gripped it, and smiled back. “You’re the boss,” he said.

“Yeah,” said Holden. “I am the boss. And you should get inside, you stupid fuck. I don’t want you fainting with pneumonia.” He squinted at Alexei’s sweatshirt. “Where did you get that?”

“Borrowed it,” he said. “From one of your people, I think.”

“Looks like a hand-me-down,” said Holden, and shook his head. “My kids haven’t worn one of those since, what? — ’91.”

“A significant year,” said Alexei.

“Yeah.” Holden’s eyes brightened at that, and he snapped his fingers. “Yeah! That’s when you guys threw out the commies — Yeltsin in the tank and knocking over Lenin and all that shit. You there for that?”

“I can’t remember,” said Alexei.

“Right — amnesia.” He said it quietly. “Of all the luck…” And at volume: “You’re going to do okay here, pal.”

Pal. Outwardly, Alexei kept up his smile. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the children’s room below and the padlock on the outside of it. “I will go inside,” he said, and broke away from Holden.

Alexei went back inside, but he didn’t return to his cabin. First he wandered up to the bridge. There was only one crewmember on duty there, holding the wheel and staring at the horizon over the bow. The radio was within reach of the guy. If Alexei wanted it, he’d have to take him down. Alexei clutched the asp in his pocket. But the moment was lost. “You’re welcome to stay, just don’t touch anything,” said the crewman, before Alexei could even introduce himself. Alexei made a show of looking over the controls here, then wandered over to the big map table. A chart of a coastline had been pressed down under a sheet of heavy glass. Maybe it was Maine, but Alexei couldn’t say exactly where — the chart was navigational, and awash in numbers.

He asked where they were right now, and the crewman tapped the glass with his fingertip, over open sea: “Right about here.” Alexei didn’t see any scale to the map, but he noted with some interest that they were about an inch to the east of the dotted line that indicated the 200-mile limit.

When Alexei asked where they were headed, the crewman just shrugged. “Okay,” said Alexei, and didn’t ask again.

If he wanted to use the radio, and have any hope of surviving to wait, he’d have to pick another time.

So Alexei climbed down to the main deck, and made his way into the yacht’s lounge. On the Turk Shadak’s yacht, the equivalent room had been lined with cushioned benches and was decorated with a kind of faux-nautical kitsch that included a fishing net overtop the small bar and a half-scale lobster trap dangling from the ceiling.

Holden Gibson’s boat was considerably larger, and so it was with the lounge. But by comparison, this one was stripped down. A small part of the room had been sectioned off as an office area — Alexei saw a fax machine, as well as two laptop computers hooked up to a printer. The rest of the room was set up like a theatre — or, more appropriately, a lecture hall. Folding chairs had been arranged in rows along the length of it, facing a projection-screen TV next to a wooden podium. There were some long tables along the sides of the room, stacked with cardboard stationery boxes. Alexei went to a table, and opened a box. He picked up one of the pieces inside — printed on thick red paper stock.

He read:

And underneath, in slightly smaller type:

“A sad seller,” Alexei repeated under his breath. It was marginally better than what he’d suspected of Holden and his crew. More than marginally, actually. But Alexei reminded himself that it still didn’t preclude his worst suspicions being true.

He put the paper back down and looked over some of the other sheets. They all had similarly themed titles: SELL THAT MAGAZINE! And DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER! And WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T SELL THIS PRODUCT! Further down the row, the titles varied intriguingly: HELLO MR. POLICEMAN! And CHILD WELFARE WORKERS — ANYTHING BUT! And THE YOUNG OFFENDERS ACT: CANADA’S GIFT TO YOU!

“Canada?” Alexei muttered. What do these people have to do with Canada?

“We used to spend a lot of time in Canada.”

He looked up to see Heather, standing in the doorway leading astern. She was back in her raincoat, and a cigarette dangled between her fingers. She closed the door with her shoulder and sashayed across the lounge. Her brow crinkled in a little, remembering to frown. Her eyes took a faraway cast as she continued:

“Toronto, Mississauga, London — yeah, they’ve got a London up there. I remember we spent about a week in Ottawa — that’s the Canadian Washington — back in ’88. Kept the vans in a trailer park outside at night, and through the day, it was just like scooping money off the ground. Ottawa was good to us.”

“1988?” Alexei tried to remember what he was doing that long ago. Afghanistan? No. Afghanistan was finished for him. He wondered about Heather. “You must have been a little girl,” he said.

But she appeared not to hear him. “Time, Newsweek… I remember Popular Mechanics did real well in Ottawa in ’88. Housekeeping magazines, though…” She stopped in front of him, put her hand on his shoulder so the ember of the cigarette warmed his earlobe and looked up at him with lazy, laughing eyes. “They never did go in for Good Housekeeping much in Ottawa.”

Alexei frowned. “How old are you, Heather?”

“Are you going to do something?”

She leaned close to him, so that if he wanted — if he leaned just so — their lips could brush and kiss and it could have seemed like an accident. But all he could think about were the tiny bunk beds in the brig below, and the children on the Romanians’ yacht, that served Mrs. Kontos-Wu drinks and had him pegged as KGB — and literally pegged him, across the forehead, before dumping him into the ocean.

“And when did you start working for Mr. Gibson?” He took hold of Heather’s wrist and pulled her hand from his shoulder.

“A long time ago. All right?” Now the languor was gone, and all that was left in her eyes was a suspicious resentment. “You want to play brave social worker and rescue me? You know what you got to do.”

Alexei smiled coldly. “Take care of Mr. Gibson?”

“That’s right.”

“Why don’t you tell me some things first.”

“What do you need to know?”

“First: what is this place? What is with the magazines?”

“Magazines.” If she’d been angry a second ago, she’d forgotten it now. She said “magazine” like it was some exotic sex act, and she tried to sidle close to Alexei again as she went on. “Magazines are everything. They bought this boat, they bought our house down in Florida, they bought… hell, they’ll buy anything. Magazines are our business. Can’t you see?” She swept her arm over the bank of flyers and pamphlets. “It’s almost all profit!”

Alexei didn’t see how that could be — unless, of course, you never delivered any magazines — but he kept that question to himself.

“How old were you when you started with this wonderful business?” asked Alexei. “Twelve? Thirteen?”

That stopped her short. “I was old enough,” she said quietly.

She glared at him — and he could tell that this time, it wasn’t just pique. He knew he’d touched a nerve in Heather.

“He’s a prick,” she said. “Back when I started, it was just magazines. Lately, though — it’s been getting weird.”

“Weird? In what way?”

“He’s fucking nuts,” she said. “You know why we’re here?”

Alexei raised his eyebrows in a question.

“A fucking dream — that’s what he says whenever we ask.”

“So you want me to kill you a crazy dreamer,” said Alexei. “Why don’t you just do it yourself?”

Heather shut her eyes. She pinched her cigarette hard between her lips and drew a lungful.

“Did he by any chance do something to you?” asked Alexei.

Heather’s cigarette crumpled in her fist, and the tip of it burned the side of her finger. “Fuck!” she shouted, and from upstairs, someone yelled: “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” she shouted back — her voice just about twisting back on itself to be cheerful. “Just stubbed my toe!”

“Sorry,” said Alexei, meaning it. He knew about bad memories.

She glared at him. “So what about it?”

“I don’t think so,” said Alexei. “Here we are, in international waters, well off any of the main shipping routes I am told. Right now, I am very curious about where it is that we are going to dock next. Perhaps after I find that out…”

“You’re a fucking traitor,” she said. “That’s what you are. I protected you, you know. You could at least—”

She stopped in her tirade, and looked out over Alexei’s shoulder, out one of the windows. “Shit,” she said. “They’re early.”

Alexei followed Heather onto the deck, where various other crew were already gathered. Everyone’s attention was focused on the trio of Zodiacs bearing down on them. When Alexei wondered aloud whether it was Greenpeace, he got a big laugh.

“Then who?” he asked Heather.

“Russians,” she said. “Or something. That’s all he tells us.”

“That’s right,” said the bald one, whose shirt Alexei was still wearing. “That’s all we need to know.”

Beneath them, the engine noise changed and Alexei could feel the deck pitch slightly as the yacht started to turn towards the Zodiacs. After a few minutes of manoeuvring, the three little boats had managed to pull up parallel to the yacht, and the crew moved to lower rope ladders. Alexei peered over the edge of the railing. Each of the Zodiacs carried three men, wearing dark green rain gear. The only clue as to their Russian origins were the AKMs slung over the shoulders of — Alexei made a quick count — seven of the men. The Zodiacs were otherwise unmarked, and their crew all wore their hoods up. It would be funny, Alexei thought, if he wound up recognizing one of the men here from the old days.

Depending, of course, on who it was.

Just to be safe, Alexei moved from the railing and sidled back into the lounge. There, he busied himself sorting stacks of paper, pretending to read through the TIME IS MONEY! pamphlet — all the while watching through the window, scoping the company.

In all, four of the men came up, and when the last one passed the window and made his way up to the bridge, Alexei let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. No trouble, he told himself. No trouble.

Shortly afterward, the crewman he’d met on the bridge came into the lounge, along with two others.

“Finished your watch?” asked Alexei conversationally.

“I’ve been relieved,” he said. “They’re taking us the rest of the way.”

“Ah.” Alexei nodded. “Like a harbour pilot.”

“Yeah,” he said, and shivered a little. “But with no harbour.”

Alexei was about to ask something else when Holden burst into the room and fingered him. “You!” he shouted. “Get up to the bridge! It’s time to start work!”

“Okay,” said Alexei, and started toward the door. “See you later,” he said to the yacht’s former pilot.

“Screw the good-byes,” snapped Holden. “Vite, Russkie, vite!”

As soon as Alexei got close enough, Holden grabbed his arm and all but hauled him up the stairs.

“These fucking Russians,” he muttered to Alexei, “are taking over my ship. Listen to what they say, and tell me after.”

“I will listen,” promised Alexei. “And keep my mouth shut, yes?”

“Da,” said Holden. “You’ll do fine.”

Less than ten seconds on the bridge, and Alexei wasn’t so sure.

“Hey!” shouted one of them as Alexei and Holden climbed up into the room. The men were all lean and athletic — they looked to Alexei like commandos more than anything. But they seemed completely at home on the bridge of an American motor yacht. “No one here but us!”

He was speaking English, but even so — he didn’t sound Russian at all. Alexei looked at Holden with a question in his eye, but Holden’s face was granite. Alexei felt his own stomach twist, even as one of the others muttered something in his native tongue.

No, it was not Russian — not even close to Russian.

He was speaking Romanian.

And Holden Gibson — Heather’s prick, who’d taken over this child labour ring and come here on the urging of a dream — this American couldn’t tell the difference between Russian and Romanian.

Alexei should have let on to Holden; the same way, he supposed, he should have worked a little harder to radio in some kind of a distress call over Mrs. Kontos-Wu’s disappearance. He could barely even speak Romanian — he remembered a couple of words, from a language course more than a decade ago, but languages had never been his strong suit.

“Get off! Or deal is done!” shouted the Romanian. He actually lifted his AKM from where he’d leaned it against a cabinet, and waved it at the two of them. Holden recoiled at that.

“Hey!” said Holden. “This is my ship! And—” he paused “—and Jimmy here doesn’t know jack shit about navigating boats! Do you, Jimmy?” He nudged Alexei hard in the ribs.

Alexei shook his head.

“So he’s staying up here! Like a guard!”

“Like a guard,” said the Romanian, and turned to his two compatriots. They whispered among themselves in Romanian, and Alexei struggled to listen. “Deal,” and “injury,” and possibly “water.” These Alexei could make out. Otherwise, he didn’t have a clue.

“No,” said the Romanian finally. “Don’t want to let us alone to drive boat, you turn around, go home. Deal off.”

Angry colour stained the capillaries of Holden’s face, and he stepped forward — unmindful, for the moment, of the assault rifle between him and the Romanian. “Fuck you!” he screamed. “Fuck—” and he jabbed his finger at the Romanian’s chest “—you!”

Alexei put his hand on Holden’s shoulder, and gently pulled him back.

“Maybe you don’t go home,” snarled the Romanian. “Off the bridge!”

Holden raised up his hands and backed down the steps, and when another of the Romanians motioned to Alexei, he followed. At the bottom of the steps, there waited two other Romanians. Holden didn’t argue when they ordered him back to the lounge, where the rest of the crew had been marshalled. It was there, explained one of the Romanians, that they would just have to wait.

“They said that you should stop meddling,” Alexei told Holden. “They said that you were a fat ugly fuck who could as easily be drowned. The one guy said, ‘Why doesn’t he do as he’s told?’ The other guy said, ‘Why don’t you just shoot him. He is a real prick.’ Then the guy with the rifle said, ‘Let me deal with this.’”

Of course, not having understood more than a couple of words of the Romanian’s conversation, Alexei had made it all up — but Holden seemed to swallow it as word-for-word Russian-to-American translation. And Alexei had read Holden correctly — the invective seemed to convince him more than anger him. Holden’s eyes wrinkled distastefully, but he nodded.

“All right,” said Holden. “All right, I was half-expecting some shit like this. These are the kind of people we’re dealing with. Right, Russkie? Hey Russkie, what kind of guns were those fucks waving?”

“AKMs,” said Alexei. “Like the AK-47, but a little better.”

“Hah!” Holden grinned broadly, and slapping Alexei’s shoulder. “You’re remembering shit! You remember where you come from any better?” He dug his fingers savagely into Alexei’s shoulder, and his grin turned feral. “Like maybe you recognized some people? Your comrades up there? For instance? Is this a fucking double-cross, Russkie?”

“Hey!”

Holden grunted as Heather grabbed his arm, and pulled it away from Alexei. “Leave him alone!” she hissed.

Holden turned to her, and for a second Alexei was afraid he was going to hit her. But he didn’t — instead, he reached around her with his other hand and patted her ass. She glared up at him, and he laughed.

“Relax,” he said. “I’m just yanking his chain. We’ll be done with this whole thing in a couple hours.” She let go, and glared at him as he made his way up to the podium. The rest watched him too, but without the same rancour; their heads swivelled like sunflowers marking the passing of hours. “Don’t worry,” he said to the group. “This is part of the plan — these guys are just super-cautious, all right? We’ll be ready to load up in a couple hours, tops.” And he raised his hands slightly, like a maestro at the ballet.

As if Holden had cued it, the motor yacht’s deck shifted to port.

He’d grabbed her ass. Alexei thought about the empty barracks down below with their tiny beds, and the slim likelihood that fraudulent magazine subscriptions were as far as this apparently highly profitable racket went. As they began the long, lazy turn, Alexei looked at Heather, then at Holden Gibson, and then something turned in his stomach. And he made his decision.