by A. J. Roe
“That’s nice. Very apt.” Rick thought back to the number of times he’d faced death in the past few days. Wasn’t it about time he started to appreciate the gifts he’d been given?
They both sat in silence for the next ten minutes or so, watching the town lights on the horizon gradually grow in size.
“Have you got any cash?” Yuriko said as houses and shops began to spring up around them. Rick shrugged, he’d lost his wallet somewhere between the love hotel and the squid container. All of which now seemed like distant memories. Despite how God-awful it was at the time, everything had certainly been a lot simpler back then. It was amazing what perspective a little hindsight could give.
“I only have a Japanese card,” she said. “If we find an ATM I could try to take out as much cash as possible then destroy it. Sooner or later though, the paper trail will lead the police here.”
Rick shrugged, as if to say ‘who cares’, he was already salivating at the thought of a hot meal and a cup of coffee. It had been almost two days since they had eaten properly. The only liquid he had found on the plane, besides the Scotch, was half a bottle of Coca Cola that had been left in the hold. They had shared the small amount of sugary liquid between the two of them, finding little sustenance in it. Now his stomach was cramping and twisting with hunger pangs. “We best move fast then.”
On the outskirts of the city, Yuriko called for the driver to pull over outside an illuminated red and white ATM booth. She stepped out of the car, leaving Rick inside with the meter running. Soon she returned with a stack of red and green notes thick enough to choke a horse and attempted to squeeze them unseen into her pocket.
As they rolled into downtown Irkutsk, the main road pulled up alongside a river on the right. Rick couldn’t see the water itself but the darkness beyond a drop off and the rushing and swirling sounds below indicated that it was moving fast. Yuriko wound down the window of the battered taxi and flung her bank card out into the waters below.
A few hundred yards further on, the pavements on the opposite side started to grow brighter and busier. There were groups of people, young and old, sitting out drinking tea and beer at wooden tables under the eaves of little cafe-diners. Compared to Japan, it was still pretty brisk but the almost-warm weather tonight was probably a rare treat for the borderlands of Siberia.
Rick glanced at the orange LED clock on the dashboard, it was nine-thirty on Saturday night. He looked down to the faded, almost invisible note he’d scrawled on the back of his hand in the back of the black BMW X8 heading towards the airport. It seemed like it was a lifetime ago.
Ellie’s birthday was tomorrow. She’d probably already seen her father’s face on the news and was wondering if he’d ever even return. Rick bit his lip and tried to force the thought from his head, knowing he couldn't give in to his despair, not yet at least. I will make it home, he told himself. Just as soon as this is all over.
They exited the taxi about halfway down the street and Yuriko slid a handful of notes into the driver’s palm, saying something that was hopefully a request to keep their trip on the low-down.
The pair walked a few dozen yards further down and turned into one of the diners that still looked like it was serving food. Yuriko led the way up to the large glass counter, which displayed a selection of cakes and weird loaf-like pastries with sugary glazes that glimmered under the pale fluorescent lights. She pointed at a couple of the breads and ordered something else in an astounding display, that to Rick’s ears, sounded like perfect Russian.
Sat at a cheap aluminium table, covered in a plastic white and red checked tablecloth, Rick tapped his foot impatiently. The scent of boiling vegetables and warm bread that spewed from the kitchens was almost good enough to eat alone.
Over Yuriko’s right shoulder, a TV was mounted on the wall in the corner of the room. It was all in Russian and he ignored it until something grabbed his attention that he didn’t need a translation to understand. First an image of the Professor flashed up, followed by the same old ones of him and Yuriko from the Japanese news site. He nudged her foot and nodded towards the screen as images rolled by of a massive manhunt taking place at the docks in Fukuoka. Police were trawling the scene with assault rifles raised, ready to kill. Finally, the face of a middle-aged Japanese detective replaced it and talked for some time, no doubt giving descriptions of the pair who were considered to be armed and dangerous.
“When did this become an international incident?” Rick hissed.
“I don’t know. But we’d better keep our heads down.” Just as she spoke, an older woman in a headscarf, with a massive gut and a complete lack of table manners clattered two plates and an aluminium coffee pot down before them, apparently not caring in the slightest what was on the TV.
Suddenly Rick was a lot less concerned about their predicament than he had been two seconds ago. He dug into a block of what appeared to be deep fried Brie, sausage and sauerkraut on his plate with animal ferocity. He washed it down with a pint of sweet black coffee and the lot was gone in less than five minutes. Rick tilted back in his chair, with a toothpick between his lips, celebrating the return of energy to his weary body and mind.
This buzz soon passed. Now more than ever, he just wanted a warm soft bed and to sleep for a year, but the night was far from over. If Yuriko was right, they would soon be being tracked by both Sota and the killers he had on his payroll, as well as whatever local law enforcement agencies Interpol had arranged.
Rick sat back watching his accomplice take tiny careful bites of her food and resented having eaten his plateful like a starved pig, even though it had felt so damn good at the time. With his brain now functioning properly for the first time in days, Rick pondered on the disturbing thoughts in the back of his head. He managed to whittle them down to two burning questions: How the hell did I end up trying to save the life of a colossal, ancient computer with the power to alter the course of human history? And why is watching Yuriko eating a plate of fried cheese in an old woman’s clothes turning me on?
24
Rick jolted awake in a pitch-black room, his face covered in a sheen of cold sweat. Where am I?
As the seconds ticked by, reality dragged itself from the shadows and he was returned to the grotty accommodation they’d secured the night before.
Even though the dream Rick had been lost in moments before had already faded from memory, Thyos had definitely been there, speaking with him.
It was a weird feeling, knowing she’d been in direct communication with his subconscious mind. He wasn’t so sure that the positives of sleeping with the relic in his hand, tucked beneath the pillow, outweighed the negatives.
To his left, Yuriko was still dead to the world and snoring intermittently in the stained, single bed. Being the gentlemen he was, Rick had of course volunteered to take the rock-solid sofa.
The only guest house they’d been able to find that didn't insist on seeing their passports before letting them in had been tucked away in a shady area littered with ‘Thai Massage’ parlours, pawn shops and twenty-four-hour liquor stores. But a bed was a bed; a full stomach and a solid few hours of uninterrupted sleep had done Rick a world of good.
Silently, he opened the door and slipped out into the dark corridor. The sun was yet to rise and the only source of light was a flickering green and white emergency exit sign halfway down the twenty-five-foot corridor, giving the tiny hotel the vibe of an underground carpark or a crack den.
Pushing through a heavy red fire door into the fire escape stairwell, Rick peered over the railings and was glad to find there was no movement nor sounds coming from the floors below. The only noise was the distant howl of a stray dog somewhere out in the darkness of the city beyond. His palm found the relic in the back of his waistband.
“I hope you’re going to apolo-”
“-Listen.” Thyos’s voice had none of the usual warmth he had come to expect from her and Rick knew straight away that something was wrong. He fell silent. “It has taken som
e time, but I have a plan. We must act fast, you are not safe here.”
“What are you talking about? We’re fine, no one recognised us.”
“No. The cafe owner reported you to the police about twenty minutes after you finished your meal. The Russian border authorities are tracking your movements and will find you via security camera footage in less than an hour. Likewise, Sota and his friends will soon be on Russian soil. But if you get moving right now, I can make sure there is no way for them to locate you.”
“Shit,” he muttered to himself, “Okay let’s do it then. The faster we get this over with, the faster I can get home.” Rick no longer even cared that he was living in blatant denial of the dangers they were facing.
“There are just two small problems with the plan.”
“What are they?”
“First, we must first find a local man named Ivan Mitrovski, he is a former special operations soldier and may have the connections we need to get you both out of the country covertly. However, this presents an obstacle as he is somewhere beyond my vision.”
“What? Well how do you know he isn’t thousands of miles from here? Or that he even exists at all?”
“There is enough evidence to assure me that Ivan is hidden somewhere in Irkutsk. Although I cannot pinpoint him exactly, there is a blind spot in my vision on the western side of the city, approximately the size of a football pitch. The dead centre of this spot is number three-nine-two Lesnaya Street. I believe this to be his location.”
“Great, so we’re just going on hunches now, are we? What's the other good news then?” Rick's dry attempt at humour was utterly lost upon her.
“From what I hear, our friend Ivan is not exactly the welcoming type.”
✽✽✽
From the guesthouse, Rick and Yuriko headed south. They followed a dog-eared tourist map that Rick had found nosing around in the lobby as Yuriko settled their bill with the night-shift manager.
The pair had set off just after five AM, figuring it wasn’t early enough to seem suspicious but would give them the best chance of working through the city unseen.
Now, after just half an hour of walking in the hazy grey pre-dawn, the morning sun was rising fast. The drab concrete apartment buildings of the suburbs were lit up by long rays of warm, yellow light streaking across a cobalt blue sky above.
Soon Rick and Yuriko found themselves back on the riverfront, walking along a raised pedestrian promenade that ran alongside the banks of the powerful Angara River. Surprisingly, the old town had rather a quaint, countryside vibe, with log clad cafes and cosy restaurants lining the streets.
Rick had never even considered visiting Russia before, let alone Siberia. He’d always assumed the country was a frozen wasteland like in the movies but this morning, the waterfront had a serene beauty to it that he hadn’t expected. Maybe one day, once all this shit was a distant memory, he’d return and see the country properly.
Soon enough, the walkway ended giving Rick and Yuriko no choice but to join back onto the main road. They walked fast with their heads down, the streets that ran towards the city centre were growing busier by the minute.
After about half a mile, the pair went off the edge of the tourist map and found themselves in a weird little area that was lined with bushy green maple trees on their left and grey Soviet Bloc-era residences on the right.
A few hundred yards onwards, at an intersection sitting between two of the apartment buildings, Yuriko noticed the sign for Lesnaya Street. They turned right and entered the road about two thirds of the way down. As Rick clamped eyes on the hundreds of numberless, identical, grey stone houses running for half a mile in each direction, any hope of finding their destination quickly was killed.
Number three-nine-two sat a full flight of stairs below street level. Above it was what looked like an old convenience store that had long since closed down and boarded up all of its windows.
The entryway stank like piss and rotten meat. No doubt scraps of scavenged food had been carried in by rats and devoured in this quiet dark corner of the city.
Yuriko reached out for the peeling, wooden door and rapped her knuckles against it. Dust spilled down from the handle and edges of the frame as though nobody had used the entrance for a decade. A sure sign that whoever lived here probably wasn’t going to appreciate a couple of foreigners banging on the door and waking them up to ask for help.
Rick finally gave in to the burning in his chest and took a lungful of fetid air. With each second that passed, he was coming to doubt Thyos’s logic further. He wondered if there was a chance that eons of isolation could have driven her insane. Is it even possible?
Sick with the anticipation of whatever grim prospect awaited them beyond the portal (and hoping not to take another breath in the entryway), Rick leaned over and smacked his fist hard against the wood eight times. The echo from inside was hollow sounding as though there was literally nothing but space beyond the door. The only thing indicating any sign of life at all was a security camera mounted in the corner above the entrance.
“Отъебись!” a gruff voice echoed from directly behind the wood and they both jumped. There hadn’t seemed to have been any movement inside, let alone just inches from where they stood. How long has he been there?
Yuriko turned to Rick, her cheeks tinted slightly red, “He told us to F-word off.”
“Please,” she said, switching back to Russian. “I need to talk to you. Just for a minute.”
“Я сказал отвали,” the voice repeated with even more insistence than before. “Ты сын шлюхи.” Yuriko’s eyes widened.
“What is it?”
“He told us to ‘F-word off’ again and then implied your mother was a prostitute, with whom he would have intercourse.” Her face flushed dark red.
Rick smiled. “Sounds like my kind of guy. Tell him we know who he is.”
“You are Ivan Mitrovski, right?” She replied in his native tongue. “A friend told us where to find you. We need your services.” Although it was a bare-faced lie, it seemed a perfectly plausible scenario.
Yuriko almost jumped out of her skin at the sudden clunk of metal. What sounded like a ten-pound deadbolt was pulled from its place and the ancient door swung open. She went to speak but choked on her words, letting out nothing more than a squeak. Rick now knew exactly what Thyos meant when she said Ivan wasn’t “the welcoming type.”
A cocked and loaded, snow-camouflage hunting crossbow was held less than an inch from Yuriko’s face. The braided nylon cord was pulled back with such tension it was practically begging to release the sharpened steel-point right through her eye and out the back of her head.
25
“Come in, quickly,” Ivan growled in English.
Crossing the threshold from the morning light into the darkness beyond felt like stepping into a tomb. The air outside, that had turned Rick’s stomach just moments before, tasted warm and fresh in comparison.
Airborne black mould was sitting heavy in the back of his throat before the door was even shut.
The man before them looked to be somewhere in his mid-fifties and was built like a tank. He had several teeth missing and the few remaining ones that weren’t yellow or brown were all silver. Ivan's nose was crooked and flat, looking like it had been broken more times than he could count and his dark eyes flicked around wildly like some cornered reptilian creature.
Inside the corridor, a security cage of iron bars about five feet deep had them trapped, like the border security they have in prisons. The three stood in the cage, with the loaded crossbow still flicking between the visitors, while Yuriko did her best to convince the psychotic old man that they hadn’t been sent to spy on him.
Moving slow and steady, not wanting to set the mad Russian off, Yuriko reached into her back pocket and pulled out a wad of crumpled notes, flicking them with her thumb to show him how much was there. Ivan grunted in agreement and finally proffered a hand for each of them to shake.
Rick stifled a sneeze as they were led down the thirty-foot corridor. The right-hand side was exposed grey stone, with two doorways about halfway down, both shut. The left wall was a layer of rotten, grey plasterboard. Families of rats squeaked and scurried behind it as they passed, sending a shudder down Rick’s spine. If there was one thing in this world he hated, it was rats.
So far, everything about Ivan and where he lived was deeply unsettling. The fact that Thyos couldn’t see them here only compounded his fears tenfold.
Rick and Yuriko trudged along behind their host. He limped down the corridor, his left leg dragging, until they reached a room at the end.
Ivan pulled a second set of keys out from the pocket of his faded combat trousers and unlocked the door. He swung around just in time to catch Rick studying his leg.
“Landmine. Chechnya,” the old man grunted as he entered the room.
Instead of the dank pit Rick had been picturing, they were met with a soft warm light and the sounds of chirping birds.
The basement was twenty-five feet across, with a bed set against one wall on the left and a computer workstation side on at its foot. A pair of monitors were angled inwards and various bits of hardware buzzed and flashed in a five-foot high rack unit beside them.
On the far side of the room an alcove was set back into the walls. The ceiling was all glass, some kind of walkway from the street above. It was thick and cloudy, meaning that it was impossible to see anything other than shadows as commuters walked overhead.