To Kill the Duke (32 page)

“I know that you know that, because there have been plenty of times where you have been on my side interrogating others in your current position,” Boris said.

Dmitri nodded and Boris knew he was smiling under his hood.

So, Boris removed the hood. Dmitri blinked his eyes to regain focus and he
was
smiling, just as Boris had figured.

“Comrade, this isn’t going to be pretty,” Boris announced.

“Give it your best shot,” Dmitri yelled.

So Boris did. He used his experience with the maggots from his own garbage to get Dmitri to talk.

Boris exited the room and returned with a bucket of creamy white maggots that he had ordered one of his subordinates to get for him. (Boris was also having the entire maggot episode filmed for Mr. Zavert.)

The bucket was roughly a quarter filled with the crawling creamy white maggots. Boris told Dmitri what was in it. Dmitri scoffed thinking it nothing more than a bluff.

Boris tossed the bucket’s contents on Dmitri, who screamed maniacally once he realized that Boris Gila wasn’t bluffing.

“Know what maggots like more than rotting food, comrade?” Boris asked.

Dmitri couldn’t answer because he was screaming.

“Wounded flesh, comrade,” Boris said as he pulled out a very big and sharp knife and held it flat against Dmitri’s right arm.

Boris couldn’t believe how fast and furious Dmitri’s body was flopping in the chair in a valiant attempt to toss the maggots off.

“I’ll cut you and throw more maggots on you if you don’t talk comrade. If you talk, you get a shower… and you live,” Boris lied.

“I can’t. I can’t!” Dmitri screamed.

“Can’t do what?” Boris asked as he slid the blade’s dull side up and down Dmitri’s right arm.

“Tell you!” Dmitri screamed.

“In that case… I have to act quickly,” Boris said as he cut Dmitri’s right elbow. Dmitri winced, but didn’t scream. Boris noticed that all of Dmitri’s flopping around had tossed a lot of the maggots off his body. Boris exited the room to refill the bucket he was carrying, this time up to the brim.

He actually returned with two buckets. One was empty and the other was filled with the creamy creatures. He said nothing as he circled his victim in waiting. He watched Dmitri squirm and wiggle in the chair, just like the few maggots that hadn’t been bucked off Dmitri’s mid-section when Dmitri was flopping his body around like a fish out of water. He put the full bucket of maggots down and pretended to strain holding onto the bucket that was empty. Boris wanted Dmitri to think that the empty bucket was full.

“For your information comrade, the maggots in the bucket I am holding in front of you are going to feed in and on your open wound. Not only that, they will lay eggs in that same wound. Imagine the possibilities!” Boris yelled out as he started to slowly swing the bucket back and forth. Dmitri started to scream and Boris put the bucket on the floor; all the time pretending to strain at how heavy the bucket was.

“I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you,” whimpered Dmitri.

“Good,” said Boris with a big sigh.

And Dmitri told him everything, even things Boris never knew of or cared to know of. That is why this form of torture was so effective.

After Dmitri told him where Natasha was and calmed down, despite the fact he still had an open wound and a few maggots crawling on his mid-section, Boris took his knife out of his waist band and flicked off the creamy white creatures. This had a relaxing effect on Dmitri, whose body muscles weren’t as tense now, and, that is when Boris went in for the kill.

He picked up the empty bucket and showed Dmitri. Dmitri’s body just slumped. Boris later told Mr. Zavert, that if Dmitri hadn’t been tied up so well in the chair, he would have slid to the ground like a rag doll.

“How appropriate that you used maggots on that maggot Dmitri,” Mr. Zavert wrote to Boris in a memo, shortly after Mr. Zavert had read Boris’s report and reviewed the film.

“I meant what I said comrade. If you wouldn’t have told me, I would have dumped
this
bucket on you,” Boris said quietly as he held the full bucket of maggots up to Dmitri’s face. “Be glad you told me.”

Boris had Natasha and Dmitri killed and buried together. Remembering Dmitri’s fondness for anal sex made Boris bury Natasha face down first in the coffin, while Dmitri was put face down on top of her.

“It was the least I could do,” Boris, later said to Mr. Zavert.

And Mr. Zavert started using Boris’ maggot torture as his ultimate form of mayhem for those from whom he needed to extract information.

It worked every time.

As Boris thought back to the killing of Dmitri and Natasha, he mused about a conversation he had had with his boss Mr. Zavert about killing everyone who might
think
they knew something about Stalin’s last night on earth.

“How do I determine if somebody is thinking about anything… let alone the events that lead to comrade Stalin’s death? Mr. Zavert, I am a spy, not a mind reader,” Boris had said to his boss.

“Then hire a mind reader, comrade,” Mr. Zavert ordered from behind his dark glasses, which looked ever darker to Gila.

“Are those new glasses you are wearing Mr. Zavert?”

“What glasses?” Mr. Zavert shot back.

“I think I can now close the book on this project, as I don’t think anyone else has any motivation to think,” Boris predicted.

“Because we killed them all!” Mr. Zavert shouted. “Remember: Dead people don’t talk.”

Another project Boris was given had to deal with finding out (and eliminating) who was behind the massive black-market influx of toilet paper into Moscow.

“Now this will be a satisfying project, comrade,” Boris said to Mr. Zavert.

“Nothing should or will be more important than your fulfillment of comrade Stalin’s request to kill John Wayne,” scolded Mr. Zavert.

Boris Gila bowed and apologized for his remark.

“Don’t ever say you’re sorry. Just show me that you learn from your mistakes, comrade,” Mr. Zavert told his subordinate.

But Gila wasn’t sorry. He felt that the effort being put into trying to kill John Wayne was a waste of valuable time, energy and resources. He wanted Aleksandra and Viznapu back in Russia, where they could wreak havoc on all the bad guys who were ripping off fellow Russians. Boris knew he was going to be judged on the results and the return on the investment of sending Alexei and Ivan to Hollywood. So far, the results were mixed.

“Better mixed than nothing,” Mr. Zavert had said, as he waved off Boris six months earlier, when the two had a meeting about the successful take down of the black market on toilet paper in Moscow.

How the captain and the projectionist would be of great help to me back in Russia,
Gila sighed to himself after his boss had dismissed him.

“Do you have any idea how much money you saved us by breaking up that black market on toilet paper, comrade?” Mr. Zavert asked Boris.

“I didn’t study economics, comrade,” Boris replied. “I studied cooking.”

“Right. You studied
home
economics,” Mr. Zavert said with a hearty laugh. “You saved us and your fellow citizens a bundle. Believe me, I know. Everyone now has more rubles for other things.”

“Other things?” Boris questioned.

“It takes more than toilet paper to run a country,” Mr. Zavert replied in a tone that told Boris to accept Mr. Zavert’s congratulations on the black-market break-up and get back to work on killing the Duke.

Now, Boris looked at the mountains of paperwork and leaned back in his chair. Thinking about Dmitri, Natasha, Mr. Zavert and the toilet paper made him think about his two favorite men — Alexei and Ivan.

He chuckled. Not because of the three people he had killed, and surely not about his boss. It was the toilet paper or rather the toilet paper
from America that they had sent him. First they had sent a pun. The pun was this: ‘When a clock is hungry, it goes back four seconds.’ This was a prearranged code that they shared. It meant that a package was coming. Of course, Boris hoped the package had to do with killing John Wayne.

“Boy was I wrong!” Boris exclaimed as he opened the package in the safety of his apartment.

The package contained three rolls of toilet paper.

Boris couldn’t believe the difference in the quality of the toilet paper from America. He wondered if everything in America was that much better than everything in Russia. Then, he suddenly felt guilty for such thinking and he scolded himself. He decided to go for a walk in the neighborhood to clear his head. He used to love to take walks before he had been elevated to his current position. Back then, he had the time. Now, he had to make the time to enjoy the simple things, like taking a walk around his neighborhood.

“Who said being in charge was fun?” Mr. Zavert once lectured him, when Boris had complained.

The walk was marvelous… making him forget about memos, maggots, maiming, murders, etc. His head felt good and clear. He was thinking about how lucky he was, when he came across a line of people — a very long line of people that snaked around the streets and buildings for blocks.

“What’s this for?” he asked the last person in the line; a little old woman whose face had more wrinkles than Russia had cold winters.

“Toilet paper. Today is Friday. Friday is toilet paper day in Moscow, young man.”

“Sorry, comrade,” Boris replied embarrassed beyond belief.

And then, like the Russian winter hit Bonaparte, doing a good deed hit Boris.
Give this woman your American toilet paper
. “Wait here comrade, I’ll be right back.”

“Where would I go?” she said with a shrug. “The Czar’s winter palace?” she added with just the right touch of sarcasm.

Boris ran back to his apartment. He gathered up the American toilet paper and put it in an old shoe box that he had kept empty for storage purposes that never materialized. He sprinted back to the old woman. Incredibly, the woman hadn’t moved one step closer to her destination,
nor had anyone come up behind her. Her last-in-line status was not in jeopardy.

“Comrade, this is for you,” Boris said as he opened the top of the shoebox and showed the old woman the American toilet paper.

“So soft,” she purred, as she held onto one roll after putting the other two in her big bag.

A real ‘toughski shitski’ moment for me
he thought as he smiled at her happiness.

It was a toughski shitski moment for Boris, because he was giving up such a luxury!

“And I can leave this line!” she shouted out loud into the air. “I am no longer last in line.” She brought her head down to thank the man who had just given her the gift of toilet paper. He was gone as quickly as he had appeared.

She left the line and began her long walk home. Boris followed her from the shadows, just to make sure that no one who might have seen the exchange would try to take the rolls from her. He noticed she was smiling and that made him feel really good.