A Million Drops

by Victor del Arbol

  There was no doubt that Anna owed the best thing in her life to Martin, just as she owed her love and loyalty to Vasili. What she felt for Elías Gil, though, was exactly the same as what she felt for Igor Stern—deep, sharp hatred. They were two rabid dogs who longed for nothing but the other’s obliteration and didn’t hesitate to use everyone around them in an attempt to achieve their goal. There was nothing inside them but death and destruction.

  “I wish I could kill both of you with the same bullet,” she replied.

  Igor looked so full of vim and vigor it was staggering. At fifty-three, he still dressed fashionably young: flared trousers, tight wide-collared shirts, and bushy sideburns. His skin had taken on a honeyed tone, and his manners were so refined that the elegance he exhibited on lifting a fork or dabbing his lips with a napkin seemed innate rather than learned. Aware of his effect on Elías, Igor steepled his fingers and bowed his head slightly. The man looked so sure of himself and the personality he’d created that he was willing to adopt a fatherly demeanor with his old enemy.

  “I see the years have not treated you as you deserve, Elías,” he said with a benevolent smile.

  “Things have gone all right, until now.”

  They were not alone in the hotel lobby. At some distance, three of Igor’s men sat with their eyes glued on him. Stern had become respectable, the most coveted victory for an outcast. Real triumph lay not in riches or the influence he had over politicians, army officers, and police but in respectability: a box seat at the Liceo, rooms booked at luxurious hotels in every capital all year long, a social life with the upper crust and those in the world of official culture. He collected photos of actors, musicians, writers, scientists, aristocrats, and clergy as if they were the heads of animals he’d shot on safari. Only occasionally did he visit the dungeons of his empire—the world of contraband, drugs, prostitution, and illegal gambling—and when he did, it was out of nostalgia for his beginnings.

  “Did you actually think I wouldn’t find out that you sold yourself to Ramón Alcázar for the price of my head?” Elías sensed Igor’s rage despite the unaltered Buddha-like expression he wore, the one that said he was above worldly concerns.

  Igor was a born survivor, and that was something Elías had never appreciated, he said. He negotiated with whomever he had to, made and broke promises with equal effortlessness, and showed no loyalty to anyone if it didn’t benefit him. He never gave an inch but knew how to make others believe that he had, and this kept them happy. Igor also worked for certain higher-ups in the Franco dictatorship, important entrepreneurs whom he made very rich, and had been doing it since long before Elías made his deal with Ramón Alcázar.

  “Don’t hold it against him. He didn’t know, and he tried to uphold his end of the bargain, I can assure you of that. If his superiors in Paris hadn’t tipped me off, your friend would have blown my brains out.” Suddenly his manner changed, and he became imperious. “If you were so set on seeing me dead, you should have done it yourself.”

  “Those photos—what do you want for them?”

  Elías felt the burden of Igor’s expression bore into him, coercing him.

  “I remember when you used to be harder to convince.”

  Igor enjoyed this game, it was like opening a closet full of costumes and trying them on, one by one. This was what power and money had taught him—to become any man that circumstances required, and he wondered which one to be now. His instincts told him that it was time to take off the mask and crush Elías once and for all. With just one call to Moscow, in under twenty-four hours Gil would be stuffed in a trunk on his way to the Kremlin. But he had to consider his own position, play his cards right. He, too, had been a double agent for years and was sure both sides knew it. They tolerated Igor because he could be used as an enforcer or a Trojan horse, depending on the circumstances. And they were starting to fear him, and that was no good.

  For years, Igor Stern had been very careful, followed the rules, made everyone believe he was one of the nouveau riche, a brainless idiot who dreamed of nothing but spending money on girlfriends and high-class whores, like some two-bit actor on the Côte d’Azur. He’d played his role so well that by the time they realized it was all a charade, he was too far out of their grasp, too influential, too rich, and knew too many secrets. Checkmate? Not in this never-ending chess match.

  He hadn’t waited all these years just to hand over Elías, and with him the reason they were keeping him alive. No, he’d thought of something better, something worthy of the battle the pair of them had been waging for so long.

  “I presume I don’t need to explain what would happen to you and your family if this news came out, do I?”

  “Since when do you like rhetorical questions?”

  Igor let out a hissing little laugh and fastidiously adjusted his gold watch chain.

  “Since I became a discriminating sophisticate. I’ve read a few books and met a few people over the years. And they’ve all taught me that there exists a sublime pleasure in the elegance of our violence when we express our feelings. An aria, when it comes down to it, is not so different from a battle cry; it gives voice to the same fury and power, expresses the same things: fear, courage, heroism. But what’s seen as bel canto on stage is considered savagery on a field full of mud, dead bodies, and explosions. That’s what it means to be civilized, and I’ve come to see that it has many advantages. For example, I’ve learned that true pain is inflicted not with an ax but a needle.”

  “I have no idea where you’re going with this.”

  “Nowhere but here, the exact point where you and I are now. This is what I’ve wanted since the day I saw you on that filthy train and you forced me to take your eye out over a stupid coat. I wanted to be your friend, Elías. I respected you as much as I despised you, and I know you felt something similar. Attraction and repulsion; virtue and dishonor. You want what I am, and in a way you are what I want. We could have been brothers and none of this would have been necessary, but nature separates twosomes, forces them into confrontation like pups in a litter of wolves. They end up tearing one another apart and that’s inevitable. And once again, here we are.”

  Igor Stern stood. His bodyguards pricked up their ears like Dobermans, but he gave a subtle gesture to put them at ease; he felt no threat.

  “Given that we can’t be enemies or friends, you’re going to work for me. You’ll be my subordinate—my slave, in fact. You’ll give me your virtue, the recognition you receive from your family and others, your medals. You’ll give me everything, drag yourself through the mud, and not for your ideals but simply because I require it, to make me richer, more powerful. And you’ll do it so that I don’t take from you the one thing you care about: the respect you’ll be accorded by history, the idiotic immortality that fools like you aspire to. I hear you have a very pretty daughter. How old is she? Thirteen? And a five-year-old boy. What will he think of his hero when he grows up and learns the truth?”

  Elías had been slowly edging toward the door. He calculated that the two bodyguards were in range before pulling out the Colt .45 automatic and shooting each man twice.

  It was all so fast that when he turned to aim the cocked gun at Igor, the Russian’s mouth was still hanging open.

  “Martin was right. I should have killed you with my bare hands in Paris when I had the chance.”

  He stuck the barrel in Igor’s mouth and thought of Irina, of the nights they’d made love in silence, surrounded by strangers. He thought of the endless stifling walks, carrying Anna; of Claude’s death; of Martin’s cries as he was tortured while Michael bled out at his feet. But more than anything, he relived the pain of that wooden stick that had made his eyeball burst, the pain that been imprinted in his mind forever, tormenting him, a wave whose intensity ebbed and flowed but never disappeared. The pain that sometimes made him inhuman, a crazed beast who tortured those he loved most, a degenerate whose onl
y limits were inside him.

  He pulled the trigger and blew Igor’s brains out.

  And then finally Elías cried out in victory.

  28

  BARCELONA, NOVEMBER 2002

  According to the airline’s passenger list, Luis should have been on a flight to London, on his way to marry the beautiful woman who’d waited for him until his arrival disappeared from the list of those displayed on the console. But instead of relaxing in a first-class seat and thanking his lucky stars, Luis left the stunning beauty waiting and was instead driving a rented Mercedes along the coastal highway. Alcázar followed at a prudent distance, shaking his head disapprovingly at the news on the radio. Clashes at the lake between police and environmental groups were heating up. Two officers had been wounded and a Molotov cocktail had blown up a digger. Construction, for the time being, was still on course. He knew that the news would not be well received by Agustín González. The companies invested in ACASA didn’t need this kind of noise; the rich liked the politics of fait accompli, wanted their plans to go smooth as silk, and the lake project had been nothing but one problem after another. One of those problems, and not the smallest, was the one he was now being sent to take care of.

  Agustín González was of the same opinion as Anna: He had to stop the leaks that were coming from Siaka and Laura’s laptop. Alcázar warned Agustín that his son-in-law would probably be there as well, but the man’s response was categorical.

  “Dead dogs don’t bite.”

  This made him think of the previous evening with Anna, when she’d refused to discuss Igor Stern. Alcázar had kept insisting until she sealed his mouth with an affectionate kiss on the lips. They were in a dark alley and her face seemed to float above him in the hazy light of the streetlamps.

  “After all this time, you’re still just a poor boy who never lived up to his father. You could have been such a magnificent man, Alberto, the man Cecilia wanted you to be.” She never called him by his first name. “But it’s too late for that kind of nostalgia.”

  Rather than bitterness, her words were spoken with genuine affection, but they made him feel terribly alone and vulnerable. And it was then, at that instant, as the venerable old woman leaned on his arm to light one of her Davidoffs with a long match, that he understood what her kiss meant.

  There was no Igor Stern.

  Outside of business hours, Flight was quiet as a tomb, with just one light on in the back where Vasili Velichko had made his favorite dish for Tania: roast pork with dumplings and sauerkraut, served with a good red wine. It was too rich for his delicate stomach, but he loved watching Tania eat it, seeing the enjoyment on her face and in her eyes.

  “Would you like seconds?”

  Tania was stuffed, though, and to Velichko’s exasperation she pushed her chair back from the table and patted her thighs, satisfied.

  “I’d love a strong coffee.”

  Vasili poured her coffee and brought out a bottle of vodka and two shot glasses. Tania was surprised.

  “No liquor. Doctor’s orders, in case you’d forgotten.”

  Velichko flared his nostrils and snapped his teeth in the air with a grumble.

  “This morning I shat blood again. I can see the signs. A little vodka isn’t going to keep me out of the grave, but it’s not going to send me there any faster either.”

  Tania reached a hand across the flowered tablecloth to squeeze Velichko’s wrinkled fingers. Suddenly, she realized that he was an old man who had seen more over the course of his life than she ever would.

  “How old are you, Uncle Vasili?”

  Velichko scratched a white eyebrow with his knuckle.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been born so many times.” He let out a cackle, which quickly led to a cough and a nip of vodka.

  Tania wiped a drop of liquor from his lips with her thumb. She felt safe in the halo of light cast by the candles around them. The rest of the bar was in darkness and the shadows allowed her to escape her uncle’s inquisitive gaze. Although not completely.

  “You’ve eaten my food and drunk my coffee and vodka, so I think the least you can do is tell me what’s wrong.”

  “We both know what’s wrong, Vasili.”

  The old man stood very slowly and began clearing dishes. Tania took hold of his arm, to keep him from leaving.

  “You have to help me. She’ll listen to you.”

  Velichko freed himself of Tania’s hand and shuffled to the sink.

  “Anna Akhmatova listens only to classical writers, especially if they’re dead. She doesn’t like the living because they talk back. Patience was never her forte. You should know that by now.”

  “But you’re like her brother.”

  Velichko placed his palms on the marble countertop and shook his head crossly.

  “The woman lives a hundred yards away and hasn’t deigned to visit me in a year.”

  “I still don’t understand the ridiculous grudge between the two of you. Neither of you will tell me what happened.”

  “I just did. Your mother doesn’t like it when people disagree with her or tell her the truth.”

  “And what truth did you tell her, to offend her so deeply?”

  Vasili had begun to turn the glasses upside down on the counter. As though unhappy with the way they were now arranged, he realigned them all.

  “When that poor boy, Roberto, was killed, I said what I had to say, and she hasn’t forgiven me for it, nor will she. Your mother is no different from him, you know that? Just like Stern. If she weren’t convinced of my loyalty, and of the fact that I’m already on death’s door, she’d have taken me out herself by now.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  Velichko banged the marble with his fist.

  “I will say it, and why shouldn’t I? If you’re not willing to accept it, you can simply walk out the door this minute. Nobody, listen to me, nobody knows your mother better than I do. I know her virtues and her faults and I’ve seen plenty of both of them over the course of more than sixty years. I saw her as a filthy child living in an orphanage and I saw her take Igor Stern’s throne and become the Matryoshka. Your mother won’t listen to me, Tania. And I don’t know if I want to help you.”

  “She swore that what happened to that boy was an accident, that she never ordered Zinoviev to kidnap him and certainly didn’t say to kill him.”

  Vasili Velichko raised his head and wished it would explode. He returned to the table, filled his glass with vodka, and cursed his heartburn and his doctor. The glass trembled in his hands, spilling a bit of the liquid.

  “And you believed her, because it was the easiest thing to do. You’re but a pure, clean soul. Is that it?”

  Tania didn’t want to hear any more. She’d never wanted to know anything about her mother’s transactions; that was why she’d left home so young, and that was why they were always engaged in some sort of secret battle, a clash of wills. Tania had nothing to do with Laura’s or Roberto’s deaths and knew nothing of the Matryoshka or Igor.

  “You’re drinking too much, Vasili.”

  The old man snatched up the bottle and hurled it against the wall with all his might.

  “I could drink this whole damned bar and it wouldn’t change what I know, or what you know. Where do you think the money for this bar came from? Or the money for your mother’s bookstore, for your university fees and all your travel when you were off being such a rebel? The Matryoshka supports us—their dirty dealings, which we cloak in honor and memories and nostalgia. And we know it, and we accept it. We made a decision on the night of San Juan in 1967 and we’ve never backed down from it. But you broke the rule.”

  “That rule had nothing to do with me!”

  “You lied to Gonzalo from the start, Tania. Why didn’t you tell him who you were, who your mother was, what she did?”

  Tania shook her head obst
inately. “I am not my mother. I don’t care about her obsessive hatred for Elías Gil. For the love of God, I was just a kid when all that happened! I can’t even picture my grandmother Irina’s face! Plus, you wrote in the report yourself that Elías tried to save both of them for as long as he could.”

  Vasili Velichko regained his composure and gazed at the broken glass, small pools of vodka forming on the floor. A single ant struggled, dying in a sea of liquor.

  “You don’t understand; you’ve never understood. The resentment that turned your mother into what she is today isn’t about Nazino. That might be where it began, but it grew under the shadow of Igor. I admit that she resisted for years before being devoured by a hatred that was never hers. Through me, and then Martin, she escaped, endured, fought back. And I’m sure that your mother could have beaten Stern, that she didn’t have to become someone shaped by his every whim. When you were born, it gave her the strength to run away one more time. But that night in 1967, the real Anna died and the Matryoshka took her place. And Elías Gil is entirely to blame for that. It’s an interesting paradox, don’t you think? Elías and Igor always hated each other and took the battle with them everywhere they went. And then, bizarrely, after he shot Igor in the face and killed him, Elías conceded his victory just a few hours later at the lake.