Katja from the Punk Band (18 page)

The boat.

Kohl sits up quickly, far too quickly, and it feels like his head just about detaches itself from his body and he swoons back to the ground below, only just getting his hands out in time to stop himself crashing down onto the hard concrete.

He touches the place on his head where there is a burning pain, feels that it is sticky. There’s a puddle of quickly drying blood beneath him. His blood.

He looks up at the moon above, trying to sort himself out, clear and organize his thoughts, and it’s only then that he realizes his goggles are gone and more pain shoots through him, through his eyeballs and into the centre of his head. He finds the shattered remains of the glasses on the ground beneath him and some fragment of memory flashes across him.

Nikolai . . .

Nikolai . . . and the vial.

He checks his pockets — once, twice, again,
no
!

The vial is gone. Stolen.

“FUCK!” he screams and delivers another wicked blast of pain to his cranium.

That fucker has fucked me over again!

And the anger is a slow-burning explosion rising in his gut.

He tries to stand but his legs are weak and shaky and they collapse beneath his weight.

The dock is almost clear now, only a few crates left. The activity has dropped off. He looks at his watch and it’s only a few minutes to midnight. The boat is about to leave.

So he does all he can, crawls across the ground toward one of the few remaining crates, a pair of them side by side with a large pallet that rests underneath them both. He pulls himself into the tiny gap between them just as one of the forklift trucks shoves its blades into the pallet and begins to lift. The noise of the machine drives nails into his head but he bears down on it, focusing on the image of Nikolai’s face, focusing on what he will do to the little bastard when he finds him.

The vial is his.

And this time he’ll make sure Nikolai gets what he deserves.

The whole boat rattles and creaks as it leaves the docks and Katja is certain she hears the sound of bolts and screws popping out, of parts of the bulkhead peeling away. Will this thing even make it to the mainland?

She finishes pulling off the orange loader’s overalls, drags her hair back. The liberty spikes have sagged into egg-yolked splinters so she breaks them up a little more, peels the hair behind her ears.

“Needing a hand there?” she asks.

Nikolai is on his back, his legs in the air, the lower half of the overalls wrapped around him. One hand has a hold of his boot, the other seems to be trapped within the tangle of material.

Katja grabs his leg and gives it one sudden tug, drags him across the floor a few inches before the overalls pop loose. His boot comes off, clatters to the metal ground and they both freeze.

They’re in a claustrophobic cell of a room next to the storage bays in the belly of the boat, the first place they had found that would allow them to change out of the overalls. They listen for the sound of someone coming, but hear only the scrapes and echoes of the crates and boxes moving against one another.

Katja opens up the box that the pair of them had dragged on board and inside, resting on a bedding of hundreds of little electrical components, is her guitar. She pulls it out and examines it.

“Couldn’t you have just left that thing behind?” Nikolai asks.

“Fuck no — it’s gotten us this far hasn’t it?” She ran her fingers along a fracture that had emerged at the top of the neck between the third and fourth frets, grimacing.

“I still think it wasn’t necessary to hit him that hard.”

“Hey, we’re here aren’t we? We got on board.”

Nikolai shrugs in agreement.

“Now we just need to find the man in red.”

“The what?”

“The one who’s going to do the deal with us. He’s going to be wearing red, Januscz told me. Now remember, Nikolai, you are Januscz, okay?”

“Okay.”

“We’re together.”

Nods. “Okay.”

They climb a short set of steps that lead back up toward the deck and quietly sneak out when the coast is clear.

“Is he on board? How do we find him?”

“I don’t know,” Katja admits.

The wind is biting cold, the upper deck mostly deserted though a few figures were silhouetted against the glow of the mainland’s lights. Katja stares out toward them, smiles as she fingers the vial in her pocket. She thinks of Januscz lying in a pool of his own blood, of Kohl lying in a pool of his own blood, of Szerynski lying in a pool of his own blood. All that death and violence and yet through it all they have made it to the boat, and with the vial. They are almost there.

They walk up the side of the boat, sticking close to the doors that lead back down into the lower decks and Katja spots someone up ahead. She presses herself against a doorway, pulling Nikolai in beside her. The figure seems to be facing the other direction but the moonlight is bleaching everything; she can’t tell what colour his clothes are.

The he turns and it feels like the boat really is collapsing, the decking falling away from under her and she’s spiralling into the dark waters below.

“Dracyev.”

The word escapes her lips, frosts in the air and dissipates.

“What?” Nikolai whispers.

“What the fuck is going on?”

She presses them both fully back into the doorway, her heart now racing.

“Shit, shit, shit.”

“Katja, what is it? Did you see him?”

She shakes her head.

“Dracyev. Something’s going on, Nikolai. I don’t know, but I think this might be a trap.”

“What do you mean? Dracyev the chemical dealer?”

“The one that set up the deal tonight. Januscz worked for him.”

“What’s he doing here?”

“That’s what I fucking mean, you idiot!”

She says it louder than she intended, ducks her head back out momentarily to check that Dracyev didn’t hear, but his figure, back now turned, remains where it was.

“Something, something’s happening. Why would he be here? Januscz never said he would be on the boat. Why would he need Januscz to smuggle the vial if he was going to be here himse . . .”

And her words drift off as something occurs to her — what if Dracyev knows what she did to Januscz? What if he was here for her?

“We have to get off deck,” she says, ducks back out again.

Dracyev is gone.

Gone.

Momentary relief, then the question — gone where?

“Katja?” Nikolai whispers.

And Dracyev is there, at the end of the block of doors, coming around the corner only ten or twelve feet away, and without hesitation Katja turns and runs and Nikolai looks around, sees the figure up ahead, takes off after her. He chases her across the deck, past two workers trying to light their cigarettes in the wind, and she is grabbing at the door handles as she passes them, each one locked and slipping from her fingers.

Nikolai glances over his shoulder, sees that Dracyev seems to be jogging after them, turns back and Katja has found an open door and she dives through and it’s swinging quickly shut behind her and he grabs at it but it’s already shut and there’s a heavy clunk. He snatches at the handle but a lock must have engaged and it won’t open.

“Katja!” he shouts at the door, bangs on it.

“It’s locked itself!” comes the muffled response from the other side. “I can’t fucking . . . shit! It’s locked, Nikolai! You’ll have to find somewhere else! Quick!”

“But . . .”

Glances again, the long-coated bulk of Dracyev coming toward him and he takes off, ducks around another gap in the doors and up along a tight passageway until he pops out on the other side of the boat. Tries one door, another, another, finally one opens and he jumps inside.

The stench of ripe fruit thick around them, they are wrapped around each other in the darkness, existing only through touch, hands upon one another.

Then light floods in and the smuggler is standing there, crowbar in hand.

“Walk around if you want, stretch your legs. But don’t go far. It only takes us about half an hour to reach the mainland and if you want to get off at the other side, you need to be back here in time for the loading to commence — you do
not
want to be caught out trying to smuggle yourselves across, and don’t expect me to cover for you if you are. I’ve already contacted one of the loaders on the mainland; he’ll look out for your crate and make sure no one checks it out. It’s a little choppy out there tonight, though — perhaps you’d rather stay where you are.”

And there’s a salacious tone to his voice that makes them pull apart guiltily. They get to their feet and climb out of the crate. Ylena brushes off her overcoat, tucks some loose strands of hair behind her ear.

“You okay? You’re looking a little . . . green,” the smuggler mocks.

Aleksakhina waves him away, unable to say anything because he feels if he opens his mouth his stomach contents will quickly be unloaded onto the floor beneath him. He presses a hand to his mouth, leans against one of the other crates.

The smuggler shrugs and walks off, crowbar over his shoulder, shouts a reminder to them about being back at the crate and then is gone.

“Are you okay?” Ylena asks, putting a hand on Aleksakhina’s shoulder.

He nods a little too vigorously and dry heaves once, twice.

He hunches over for a few moments, then straightens up. “I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry. I guess I’m just not used to it.

“It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”

“Do you want to come up on deck, get some fresh air?”

“I don’t . . . I think it might be worse out there. If I see the waves . . .”

“Anatoli, they’re the same waves that we both looked out at each night from the island.”

“I know,” he says. “You go. I just need a minute.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

“You’re not leaving me. I’ll be right here. Go on. Go see what’s waiting for us.”

And the prospect softens her face into a smile. “Really? You’re sure?”

“I’m sure. Tonight,
tonight
, Ylena, we will be able to look at the waves again together — but this time we won’t be trapped on that fucking island. We can go wherever we want.”

She leans in and kisses him, and she leaves with him a sweet, vanilla scent.

“I’ll join you soon,” he tells her.

She kisses him again, then climbs the metal steps that lead up toward deck.

“Ylena?” he calls to her.

She stops, turns.

“Be careful,” he says.

She blows him a final kiss. “I will.”

It had only been because the woman had turned and run when he had looked at her that Dracyev chased after her and the man she was with. For a brief moment he had believed that perhaps it was Ylena, that she had disguised herself, but the notion quickly passed.

He knew every part of Ylena, each muscle and groove, and the way this other woman moved was far too clumsy — she lacked Ylena’s grace and the beauty of her movement. The woman vanished through a doorway, the man she was with taking a different route and slipping into a passageway farther up.

Dracyev stops where he is.

Whatever else might be going down on the boat tonight was none of his business. He has only one thing to do tonight.

One thing.

He walks back along the starboard side of the boat, stands by the rails. The boat is rocking gently as the tides moved beneath it, a lyrical rise and fall that is almost hypnotic as he stares out to sea. And then his fingers clench around the railing.

There she is.

Farther up the deck, leaning out toward the mainland’s shore just as he is, her chemical-blonde hair pinned up but still unmistakable. He can smell her even from here.

He moves closer to a metal box-like housing of some kind so he is partially concealed by it, and watches her.

She seems to be alone.

So where is Januscz?

Dracyev hunches down a little more, peering around the housing as she glances briefly in his direction.

Doesn’t see him.

Ylena turns, wrapping her arms around herself, the dark purple fabric of the coat he remembers making her flapping in the cold winds. She crosses the deck and goes through a door just behind her.

Dracyev runs up the deck, stops when he reaches the door.

Listens in first, hears nothing.

He turns the handle and goes inside.

The sound of the waves becomes muffled as he carefully closes the door behind him. He’s standing on a small platform at the top of a set of steps that lead down into one of the ship’s large storage areas, looking out over a landscape of boxes, crates, and trolleys tightly packed against one another. There’s an internal heat coming from the engine through one of the nearby walls, lending the air a thick, electric quality. He looks for Ylena but can’t see her, then hears voices coming from below.

Dracyev descends the steps on the balls of his feet, making as little noise as possible until he reaches the bottom. He follows the source of the voices, the heat of his fury matching that which is leaching from the engine room, but he swallows the fury — for now.

One of the voices is Ylena’s, the other a man’s.

Dracyev draws a gun and moves toward the voices.

They’re both whispering so he can’t quite make out what they’re saying, leans in toward a crate to listen.

Is this how things would be played out?

All his careful planning and yet it breaks down and brings him here, now — to her.

And him.

Dracyev’s nostrils flare.

He considers that perhaps he should just wait, let events unfold as they would have done had Ylena not decided to betray him further, but it seems to him that perhaps fate was delivering a decision into his hands.

The man in red. The vial. All of it was just falling by the wayside.

This was just Dracyev and his betrayer.

This would be his act.

The voices rise, become clearer, and they enrage him.

Their words are poison.