Katja from the Punk Band (17 page)

“If we haven’t hooked up again by the time the boat is getting ready to leave, then we should both make our own way onto it and we’ll figure out the rest later. You head over that way, I’ll go here.”

“I don’t . . .”

Gone again. Yet again. Off she goes.

He just about follows her but knows that would be a bad move and stays where he is. A small fire is now raging in his stomach and briefly, just briefly, he thinks of trying to find a dealer to kill it off.

But there’s Katja. He said he’d help Katja.

So he turns, heads over to where she pointed, seeking out the distinctive bulging red goggles and wonders just what Kohl will do if Nikolai manages to find him.

He looks away every time someone meets his eye, turning back on himself just to keep away from the loading crews, and perhaps Kohl is in disguise or perhaps he’s already on the boat or perhaps there’s another fucking boat, or what if he has other plans for the vial? What if? What if?

“Hey.”

A voice behind him and he turns, thinking Katja must have spotted him and oh-shit-look-who-it-is. Dressed in a flamboyant fur-lined coat but still with those flaming bugeyes.

“Are you looking for someone, Nikolai?”

And he’s got a gun, Kohl’s got a gun and Nikolai has nothing. Katja has their gun and the guitar and he has nothing, nothing.

“Because I think it’s rather fortuitous us meeting here like this, don’t you? You think you can fuck me over, Nikolai?”

The gun raised. Aimed.

“You. Useless. Fucking. Junkie . . .”

She walks a few paces in the direction she had indicated then cuts in between two crates and leans back out. She watches Nikolai shuffle off into the crowds and immediately follows him.

It’s not that she doesn’t trust him, but if he was going to fuck her over or leave her high and dry then this would be his chance — so maybe it’s a case of giving him enough rope to hang himself with, but maybe not. She stays well back, but he barely seems to be paying attention to those around him, almost bumping into workers several times and only narrowly missing the swinging blade of a forklift truck.

How the hell did he manage to survive this long without being killed?

She ducks behind a crate, sidling up alongside Nikolai and that’s when she hears voices, or
a
voice. She slows, leans into the crate to hear better, but it’s too noisy for her to discern words, so she pokes her head around the corner.

Nikolai is backed up against a wall, eyes wide and glazed.

She nudges out a little farther, sensing trouble, spots the gun, the hand, the arm, the arm that is Kohl’s. The gun that is Kohl’s. Pointed at Nikolai.

Shit.

She hears the click of the safety being dropped, and without hesitation she charges around the corner, swings the guitar and connects it fully with Kohl’s soft temple, sending the man flying backward into some wire mesh fencing surrounding one of the floodlights. He hits the ground with an ugly crunch and a couple of workers have stopped what they are doing to look up at the commotion.

Katja fixes them with a cold, flat stare and they return to their work.

Nikolai is still standing there, staring at exactly the same place as he was before, waiting for reality to catch up with him.

“Hey!” Katja barks. “Give me a hand here.”

She rolls Kohl’s body onto its side and begins going through the pockets of his jacket, and after a few moments Nikolai snaps out of it and bends down beside her.

“I . . .”

“Just shut up and search him,” she says. “What the fuck is this?”

Holds up a bar of shrink-wrapped soap, then throws it away.

“Come on . . .”

A horn sounds, signalling the boat’s nearing readiness to leave the docks.

And her expression changes as she reaches into his inner pocket — pulls out the vial.

Her face breaks into a grin.

“Mother fuck, Nikolai. Mother fuck!”

Light flashes across the glass. A pool of blood is forming under Kohl’s head and his goggles have been shattered by the impact.

“This is our ticket out of here,” Katja says. “Now let’s get on that fucking boat before anything else can go wrong.”

Aleksakhina parks his car several blocks away, winds down the windows and leaves it unlocked to encourage its theft, as if the measures were even necessary. All he carries now is the bag and the leaden weight of the guilt of what he is doing.

That and the scribbled note of the smuggler’s name and where to meet him.

He walks through a small gateway some way along the promenade that runs parallel to the bay, counts the street lights that line the way until he reaches sixteen, then stops. There is a bench to one side and a man sitting in the bench, staring out toward the glittering lights of the mainland.

Aleksakhina touches his gun, holstered across his chest, then sits down next to the man. He puts the bag between them and joins the man in looking across to the lights. Listens as the zipper is opened and closed.

“I’ll count every note once we’re on board and if there’s a single one missing . . .”

But Aleksakhina isn’t listening any more, the words blurring beneath the sounds of the tide lapping against the concrete walls of the dock.

“Hey. Are you listening?”

“I’m listening.”

“I thought you said there would be two of you?”

“She’s coming. She’ll be here.”

“Well, she’d better hurry up. I’ll be over by those loaders if she arrives.”

If she arrives.

And the man stands, hooking the bag over his shoulder, walks off, leaving Aleksakhina to stare out across the water.

The crashing sound of a crate being dumped onto the boat docked up the bay breaks his reverie and he walks along the promenade toward the activity farther up. He checks his watch — fifteen minutes to midnight.

If she arrives
, the man had said.

Waits.

Waits.

Waits.

The minutes drop away, the air getting colder and colder. He walks back and forth and perhaps this is all going to be a big mistake, perhaps the whole fucking thing will deteriorate into a useless mess, she’s changed her mind or Dracyev knows, she was fearful he knows so maybe he does, and what would he do to her, what . . .

There she is.

Like a beacon, like the glowing lights of the mainland. His future.

She wears a large purple overcoat, her hair swept up to reveal the beautiful architecture of her neck. And here he is, unshaven, thick in day-old sweat and coffee stains.

He rushes over to her, and the worried look on her face drops when she sees him, her arms open, and they embrace. He hadn’t realized how much he feared her not coming until the flood of relief washes over him and he finds himself unable to let her go.

When they finally part, he sees the dirt on her face, her clothes. “You made it out safely?”

She nods, smiles. “Somehow,” she says. “But he’ll know that I’m gone soon. He’ll come after me.”

“He won’t find you,” Aleksakhina assures her. “He won’t take you back. I won’t let him.”

He takes her hand and leads her to the loading crane the smuggler had pointed to, and the man is leaning up against the great machine smoking a cigarette.

“So she came,” he says with genuine surprise, flicks the butt of his cigarette to the ground.

He gestures for them to follow him, and he leads them to a crate reinforced with metal bands. He uses a crowbar to open up one of the sides, revealing sacks of something that smells like rotten fruit stacked against one another inside.

The odour is thick and pungent, spilling out of the crate in a sudden burst as if it were a freshly opened coffin.

“Your carriage awaits,” the sailor says, and they both climb inside.

She moves like a ghost through the corridors of his labs, but as often as she might drift through them, he knows them as intimately as he knows the curves of her body, and so he has no trouble following her at a distance. Always one corner behind, one room removed, hunting her.

The workers nod and smile at her as she passes them and he knows they are picturing her down on all fours, her sweat-clotted hair pressed into their thighs, but he is content with that. He follows her to the waiting area for those willing to act as guinea pigs for whatever experiments might be conducted that day and has watched her, on previous occasions, sit amongst them.

But this time she merely glances at them before suddenly becoming rigid, and she looks down the corridor, past the window of the lab he has concealed himself within, then ducks into a storage cupboard.

Dracyev leaves the lab, walks toward the cupboard.

“. . . told you not to call me like this. What’s happened? Is something the matter?”

Ylena’s voice.

Dracyev’s jaw flexes.

He hears the buzz of a cell phone.

“It’s too dangerous,” she says. “What if he catches us? Okay. I’m just scared that . . . I miss you. I have to go . . .”

Then silence.

Dracyev steps to one side and waits. Several moments pass, then the door opens a crack but facing away from him. Ylena steps out.

She closes the door.

He says, “Ylena.” Soft. Firm. Accusing. Questioning. Loving.

She jumps with fright but before she can say anything he leans in toward her.

“Here you are,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I needed to stretch my legs,” she tells him. “I was getting claustrophobic locked up in that room.”

His eyes go to the cupboard door behind her.

“I felt sick,” she tells him. “I thought it was a bathroom.”

“You were sick?”

“No.”

“Perhaps you’ve caught a bug or something. An infection.”

“Perhaps.”

He places a hand on her shoulder, runs it along until he reaches her neck, slides his gloved fingers around her.

“You should go back to your room. Rest. Then you’ll feel better.”

“Yes,” she says.

“Besides, I have a surprise for you — later tonight. I want you to be ready for it.”

“A surprise?”

He smiles and his fingers leave her shoulder and slide down her chest. “Go rest for now. I’ll send someone for you later.”

Ylena nods, and he leans in to kiss her, his mouth still dusted with chemicals, and he spreads them into her bloodstream as if they are a marker.

A territorial warning.

He watches her as she walks away, and she turns as she reaches the end of the corridor, glances back at him momentarily, then is gone.

Dracyev’s nostrils flare and he immediately strides past the guinea pigs and into a large lab at the rear of the building. There are four technicians inside, all of whom stiffen subtly when they notice Dracyev enter. He grabs a phone from the wall and punches in a number.

“I need to speak to you. I’m in Lab 67. I’ll wait for you in the courtyard.”

He hangs up, storms out of the room and through a back exit that leads out into one of the few open spaces in the complex. The ground is swept over with dust and miscellaneous powders, stained with dark blotches of varying colour.

A few minutes pass, then he sees the dark, lumbering shape of one of his bodyguards splintering the sunlight. “Ylena is to remain in her room, Takashi,” he tells the man, with stubble like a felled forest covering his broad chin and jaw. “I want you to make sure your men are watching her but if she tries to get out, I want you to let her.”

“Sir.”

“If she leaves the room, I want you to contact me and follow her discreetly. Do you understand?”

“Sir. Is there a problem, sir?”

Dracyev shakes his head as he walks away. “No problem.”

Mr. Dracyev?”

Sitting in the car, the window rolled down, his chemical-dipped cigarette a little red light amidst the shining black carapace of the vehicle.

“I see her, Takashi.”

“Do you want me to . . . ?”

“No,” Dracyev says, and flicks his cigarette out the window. “I’ll deal with this.”

He gets out of the car, wraps his trench coat around himself.

“You want me to wait here, sir?”

He waves a hand as he walks away. “Go back to the labs, Takashi. I’ll be back later.”

And toward the hustle and bustle of the workers who shift the crates and boxes and packages around the docks and onto the waiting boat. He sees Ylena’s bleached hair in the near distance, hangs back to watch her.

And there he is.

Half hidden behind a group of workers but it would be him, it would be Januscz.

That fucker.

Dracyev considers just ending it all now with the gun strapped to his thigh but there’s something poetic about all this, something that urges him toward the idea that this is how things were meant to happen all along. That perhaps whatever gods there might be have plans for the mule and for Ylena.

He loses sight of them both behind the workers, walks briskly toward the shore but still can’t see them. It doesn’t matter, though, there is only one place they would be going. Fate had already decided and it had brought Dracyev here to witness it all.

So be it.

He takes another cigarette out, lights it up, and walks calmly toward the boat.

He steps past a pair of workers trying to secure a support belt around a damaged crate and ascends the ramp without hesitation. A look of anger momentarily passes across the face of the bearded man at the top of the ramp but it quickly falls away.

“Mr. Dracyev,” he stutters. “You . . . nobody said that you would be coming tonight.

“Change of plans,” Dracyev tells him. “Don’t worry — consider this a social visit.”

The man laughs uncomfortably just as the five-minute signal sounds. He motions to the ground crews to finish up as Dracyev descends into the belly of the boat.

He thinks it’s an animal of some kind about to launch an attack on him when he first hears the sound, but as he fights through the slurry that his consciousness has become, he realizes it is the boat’s horn.