by Darcy Fray
Tracking Gordon in these conditions was easy; there was one set of footprints heading out and none returning. It appeared that Gordon had ventured out back toward the woods that flanked the east side of the property. The General made a note to get Gordon a pair of boots, as the footprints in the snow indicated he was still wearing a dress shoe. In fact, the kid needs a new wardrobe altogether.
The crunchiness of the freshly fallen snow underfoot resonated all the way up through his bones to his teeth. It almost tickled. As the General looked toward the tree line, a beautiful ten-point buck emerged from the woods and stopped about a hundred yards in front of him. It brought to mind Christmas, a day that had been marked by self-loathing and pity for the past three years. Perhaps he and Gordon would be able to spend it together this year?
A brittle branch snapped under the weight of the General’s foot as he moved forward, frightening the buck who tore off across the wide open field. Gradually, Gordon’s outline emerged through the trees in the distance. The General called out to him.
“Gordon!”
Gordon turned toward the sound of his father’s voice. His feet and hands were numb and wet, and he felt idiotic for storming off like a child. Still can’t face your problems. Over the years, more than a few women had pointed out this flaw to him.
Gordon waved. “Over here.”
The General waved back. It made Gordon feel even more ridiculous. His first few hours back with his father and he had already reverted to old childish behavior. His father had been through a great deal. Who was he to question his judgment? Maybe Pyotr was FSB. He certainly always seemed to have access to more money than most scientists Gordon had dealt with. His father had just been trying to protect him. He owed him an apology.
The General continued walking toward his son. He loved that Gordon had inherited his wife’s fiery temper and Irish eyes. He tried to put himself in his son’s shoes: one minute, he was sitting pretty behind a cozy desk in California, the next he was in the middle of a triple homicide in Russia. Add in a reunion with your dead father, and you’ve got a hell of a week. He had always been too tough on Gordon, even as a boy. Not many people get a second chance, the General reminded himself. He vowed to change. He placed each of his footsteps in the exact prints left by his son, not exactly walking in someone’s shoes, but nonetheless a step in the right direction. His untied bootlace caught his eye. As the General paused to tie it, a perfect silence embraced him.
Gordon neared the very edge of the tree line. He could see clouds of breath rise above his father, who appeared to be tying his boot.
Suddenly, a booming gunshot shattered the silence. A flock of birds soared up from their nearby roosts, startling Gordon. Panicked, he looked over to his father who was still posed in a crouched position. Just a hunter.
“Dad?” he called out expectantly.
The answer was not what he had hoped for. The General’s limp body collapsed into the blanket of snow, revealing a blood-splattered canvas.
Gordon’s heart pounded and his breaths shortened. He looked in the direction of the gunfire. No sign of a shooter for what seemed miles.
Gordon fought his instinct to flee and ran directly for his father, fully realizing that he would be the next target. As he neared, Gordon could clearly see the fatal wound, a clean shot through the middle of the forehead, which exited through a gaping hole in the back of his Father’s skull. There was no need to check for a pulse.
A second shot rang out. Gordon felt a scorching heat on the side of his face. Reflexively, his hand touched his cheek. It was wet with blood. He assumed he would meet the same fate as his father. It seemed appropriate that they should die side by side in this field together. He waited for it all to end, but rather than collapsing to the ground, he remained upright. Final reflexes? The soul’s last stand? He reached up to his face again and felt a deep gash across the side of his cheek. Had the bullet just grazed him? He looked over to the patch of trees again: still nothing.
A third shot sent a surge of adrenaline coursing through Gordon’s veins. This time, he ran as fast as his legs could carry him toward the house about three hundred yards away. Only three football fields. One thing at a time.
He keenly anticipated the sound of another gunshot, and his inevitable tumble to a snowy grave seemed imminent. Ridiculously, in that moment of primal fear and survival, all he could think about was Peter Falk telling him to “serpentine.” Humor and tragedy. Odd bedfellows.
Despite the fact that he had spent a great deal of his life sitting behind a desk, Gordon had always made an effort to maintain a healthy exercise regime, but the snow was deep and he found himself struggling to stay erect. A fall would mean the difference between life and death. He deftly managed to retrace his father’s steps back to the house without a single spill.
Gordon noticed the rusted sky blue car parked in the gravel driveway. A Russian-made Lada.
He blasted through the front door with a renewed focus. The keys. The kitchen counters were bare except for the coffee maker. He grabbed Dmitry’s journal and the translation from the side table next to the armchair and shoved them in his blazer pocket. He pulled out the side table drawer with such force that its meager contents, a matchbook and a TV remote control, spilled onto the floor. No keys.
He ran to his father’s bedroom at the back of the house. A chest of drawers flanked the left wall. Gordon rummaged through them in a panicked frenzy, throwing their unsought contents to the floor. He found his father’s passport and shoved it in his pocket. It suddenly occurred to him that his father must have the keys on his person.
He rushed back through the house toward the main room, smashing his shoulder on the bedroom doorjamb as he exited. Dammit. Gordon reflexively grabbed his shoulder as a sharp pain shot up his right side. His jacket felt wet. He looked down and saw that he was covered in blood. He ran to the kitchen counter, grabbed a dish towel and held it up to the deep gash on his face.
He glanced at the dining table. The computer. Gordon picked it up before bounding back out into the snow.
He paused in front of the house. What is that? A foreign sound slowly began to increase in volume. An engine. He felt the relevance of time like never before. No room for false steps. He rushed around the side of the house. His father lay dead a couple hundred yards in front of him.
The sound was getting louder. He soon identified the source, a snowmobile, racing toward him from about a mile away. What kind of man can make a shot from that distance?
Gordon was moving so fast he almost tripped over his father’s dead body, which had already taken on an eerie blueish tinge. He riffled through his father’s jacket pockets. Cigarettes? When did he start smoking? He moved on to his trouser pockets. His father’s body was positioned awkwardly, so Gordon roughly pushed his father’s chest back in order to gain access to the front pockets. The General’s body stiffly fell to one side, leaving behind a congealing pool of blood and splattering of brain matter.
Gordon retched at the horrific sight.
He wiped away the acrid bile on his sleeve and continued checking the right pocket. A wallet. Gordon stowed it in his jacket. His father’s left side was still buried in the snow. He broke through the frozen crust with his bare hands to access his father’s left pocket.
The throaty roar of the snowmobile engine grew louder.
Gordon narrowed his attention to the search for the keys. He could feel something from outside the pocket. He forced his hand in and found a set of keys. Please be for the car. Please be for the car.
Gordon stole one last look at his father and then raced back toward the house. There were too many variables in play right now. Is one of these the car key? Will the car even start? The sound of the snowmobile was getting louder. His mother’s voice came to him: “One thing at a time, Gordon.” A sudden focus washed over him. His peripheral world blurred, leaving a crystal clear image of the car before him.
Gordon sprinted to the driver’s side of the car and y
anked the door handle. The car was unlocked, but the door was frozen shut. Gordon kicked it as hard as his wet frozen foot would allow. It didn’t budge. He tried the backseat passenger side door -- it opened. He scrambled in and awkwardly climbed into the driver’s seat. He pulled the key ring from his pocket. There were five or six keys; all of them suspect.
“C’mon, Dad. Help me out here. One more time.” The sound of the snowmobile grew louder. He looked at the keys -- all color-coded. He chose the light blue key and inserted it in the ignition. Perfect fit. The car cranked over, but it didn’t want to start.
Gordon looked in the rearview mirror. The assassin was clearly coming into view now. The snowmobile stopped and the assassin aimed his long sniper rifle directly at Gordon, who ducked just as a shot rang out. The rear window shattered and the bullet passed straight through the driver’s seat headrest, clanging as it fell to the metal floor. The snowmobile engine revved. Gordon stole another glance in the rearview mirror. The man rapidly approached, only about two hundred yards out now. Seconds away. Gordon pumped the fuel pedal and turned the key again, careful to keep his head tucked down below the dash. The engine caught. He threw the manual transmission into reverse and slammed down on the gas pedal. The front wheels spun uselessly in the high snow. He was going nowhere. Gordon slammed the car into drive. C’mon. The car surged forward, lodging its front bumper in a high snow bank. He threw the car back in reverse again. This time, the wheels caught and the car swung out wide as it reversed. As he jerked the wheel hard to the right, the car fishtailed out to the left, pointing him directly down the long drive. Gordon hit the gas and accelerated forward. He glanced back at the snowmobile in the rearview mirror. The gap widened.
The long driveway spilled directly onto the main road. Left or right? As he braked, the wheel pulled hard to the left. Surrendering to fate, he took a sharp left and sped off.
An endless forest of white birch trees lined both sides of the road. One blurred into the next as Gordon sped away, leaving the snowmobile far behind.
Map! His father always kept one. With one hand on the wheel, Gordon reached across the passenger seat and unlatched the glove compartment. A shiny black Russian GSh-18 pistol fell to the floor, just beyond his reach. He had never fired a gun before and hoped to keep it that way. No map. He surveyed the road ahead. Miles of nothing. It was a strange feeling, driving with no destination. For the first time in his life, Gordon had literally handed fate the wheel.
Gordon’s soaring adrenaline had masked the pain...until now. His cheek throbbed in time with his elevated heart rate. A quick look in the rearview mirror revealed a six-inch gash running from the corner of his mouth to his ear on the right side of his face. The blood flow was slowing, but the wound would require medical attention sooner than later.
A highway sign provided his first indication of direction -- 223 kilometers to Moscow, a three-hour drive. He checked for a pursuit vehicle in the rearview mirror. The assassin surely must have seen him make the left turn. At best, he would have a thirty-minute jump on his pursuer. The M1 traffic had picked up since he’d left Fatino and the old sky blue Lada was beginning to feel more and more like a moving target. Not to mention the blown-out rear window, which was easily winning the battle with the Lada’s underpowered heater.
Shivering, Gordon pulled his father’s wallet from his pocket and swung it open. His third-grade school portrait stared back at him, right next to an old photo of his parents, taken on their honeymoon in Miami. He had never seen them look happier. His breathing quickened as an unfamiliar burning rage took hold, abolishing every ounce of remaining sentiment. Given the chance, he would not hesitate to kill the man who murdered his father. He opened the billfold and found it stuffed with a dozen 5,000-ruble bank notes. A small fortune by Russian standards. A parting gift.
A road sign pointing in the direction of a town called Gagarin caught his eye. Gordon had always been a space travel enthusiast and cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin had been the first human to journey into outer space. Gagarin’s famous quote, “I could have gone on flying through space forever,” was one of Gordon’s favorites.
Surely, it was a sign. He exited.
The town of Gagarin unfolded before him, a provincial backwater with a smattering of multi-story buildings and a healthy population of vehicles running to and from the M1. Certainly large enough to warrant a hospital or clinic of some sort.
A commemorative statue of Gagarin welcomed him, casually posed with a jacket draped over one shoulder and the other arm fully extended as if he were about to take flight. Just the first, of six or seven additional Gagarin memorials and museums he would pass on the way to the town center. All fitting humble tributes to a provincial Russian boy who rose to worldwide fame.
As he drove through the business district, he came upon a nondescript brick building marked by a sign with a white background and a red cross. He pulled into the lot, parking in the designated area along the side of the building. He grabbed his father’s computer from the passenger seat and walked to the front entrance.
There were two rules he had always been told to abide by while in Russia: 1) avoid drinking the tap water, and 2) avoid the hospitals at all cost. Rules usually comforted Gordon, but today they stood in his way.
Gordon approached the reception area, where a young woman dressed in a traditional nurse’s uniform was in charge of the front desk. She was completely unfazed by his blood-splattered clothing and seeping wound. Barely acknowledging him, she mumbled something in Russian and pushed a form his way. Gordon looked down at the paper, which was, naturally, written in Russian.
“English? You speak English?”
The girl shook her head no. Gordon looked around the waiting area; there were four elderly patients, all of whom looked impoverished and ill. Nonetheless, Gordon addressed them. “Does anyone speak English?” A chorus of blank stares answered his question.
He turned back to the girl at the desk and pointed to his cheek. “Doctor, need doctor.” Gordon pulled out his wallet and held up his rubles. “Rubles for doctor.” Suddenly more interested, the girl nodded her head and pointed to a door at the end of a dingy gray hallway.
He knocked on the door. A diminutive gentlemen of about sixty-five answered and gestured for him to enter. Wearing a near-white lab coat, he was the closest thing to a doctor Gordon had seen in the building.
His concerned expression set Gordon at ease.
“Do you speak English?”
“Yes, little. Dr. Batkin.”
Gordon sighed with relief and eagerly shook his hand. “Jerry. I cut my face in a hunting accident. I have rubles.” Gordon handed the doctor five thousand rubles, a fortune to a man whose salary was a meager twenty-three thousand rubles a year.
The Doctor nodded as he scrutinized Gordon’s appearance. Gordon was wearing his standard uniform, white shirt, maroon tie, tweed jacket and flannel trousers, all of which were covered in blood. Additionally, he appeared to have a death grip on a laptop, an atypical hunting accessory. Dr. Batkin hadn’t graduated at the top of his class, but it seemed fairly obvious this man hadn’t been out hunting moose.
“I see, hunting.” The doctor played along, motioning for Gordon to lie back on the examination table. He slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and examined the wound. Gordon’s adrenaline surge had long since passed and his entire sensory system seemed focused on the raw nerve endings in his check. He flinched at the gentlest of touches.
“I can sew and give antibiotic, but you will have scar. Yes?”
“Yes, okay.”
“Did you have success?”
“Excuse me?”
“Hunting success?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t,” Gordon replied, dreading where the line of questioning was leading.
“Please excuse me for a minute?”
“Yes, sure.” Dr. Batkin left the room. Gordon feared he was notifying the local police, or even worse, FSB. He heard him speaking to someone out in the hall, but Gordo
n’s understanding of Russian didn’t extend far beyond da, nyet, and spasiba. He would have to take his chances.
Moments later, Dr. Batkin returned carrying a rather menacing long needle. Gordon hated needles. Needles, and spiders. As a child growing up in the Arizona desert, he had once found a tarantula waiting for him in a baseball glove, abruptly marking the end of his sporting career.
“For pain.”
“No, I take pain. No needle.” Gordon waved the needle away. Fear of needles aside, how was he to know Dr. Batkin wasn’t going to drug him and turn him over to the FSB? He firmly shook his head no.
“Yes, shot. It’s okay. You need. No move.” The doctor mimicked Gordon’s earlier flinching.
Gordon glanced up at Dr. Batkin. He had soft eyes, the kind that can’t lie. Too exhausted for a debate, Gordon conceded.
The doctor injected the needle in the area just to the left side of Gordon’s wound. The warm numbing sensation of the shot provided almost instantaneous relief.
Devoid of all ceremony, the doctor picked up the suturing needle and began stitching Gordon’s cheek. The wound was deep and would require multiple layers of stitches. Gordon didn’t feel a thing, beyond a slight tugging sensation every time the doctor pulled a suture tight. The rhythmic nature of the work was almost comforting. Gordon’s eyes grew heavy. He hadn’t had a wink of sleep since the long cab ride from Saint Petersburg. His mind began to wander. It was the cabbie. Gordon was certain it was the driver who had tipped off the FSB or whomever it was that murdered his father. He struggled against every blink, but his fatigue-laden eyelids eventually won the battle. He fell into a deep sleep.
•••
Los Angeles, CA - High Rise
Fletcher walked down a long window-lined corridor near the top of a Los Angeles high rise, flanked by sweeping views extending from downtown all the way to the Pacific Ocean. He pulled his cell phone from the pocket of his fitted two-button suit jacket and dialed a familiar number.