by David Bishop
Dante glanced round the parlour. "Is there another way out of here? I don't fancy taking on the prime of Miss Jean Whiplash."
Yvette pointed at a bookcase set into one wall. "You can leave through the secret tunnel of love," she said. "Just pull out the correct volume and the bookcase will slide aside for you."
Dante strode to the bookcase and began scanning the titles of the dusty tomes: Another Week in the Private House, Confessions of an Imperial Courtesan, The Wench Isn't Dead and hundreds of similar volumes. "Which book? Which one operates the mechanism?"
Yvette smiled coquettishly. "I'll only tell you if you make me, master."
Dante rolled his eyes. "I haven't got time for any more slap and tickle. Crest, can you identify which spine opens the bookcase?"
A very appropriate title, in the circumstances, it replied. The Pervert's Guide to Secret Tunnels and Hidden Crevices.
Spatchcock had joined Dante at the bookcase. "I see it!" He pulled the thick volume towards himself and the shelving slid sideways to reveal a corridor. Dante shoved his pungent companion through the gap and turned back to see what was delaying Flintlock. He was jumping around the room, his trousers still stuck at half-mast, while the semi-naked schoolteacher was whipping him with her cane.
"Diavolo! Haven't you had your money's worth yet?" Dante asked despairingly. He bundled Flintlock into the hidden corridor, before bowing to the three sex workers. "Sorry to leave so soon ladies, but you know what men are like - our priorities always come first. Perhaps another time?" Dante ducked behind the closing bookcase, narrowly avoiding several hurled objects.
Spatchcock winked at his former commander. "You sure know how to show the ladies a good time."
"Just get moving," Dante snapped, pushing his two associates forwards. "We've got a long journey ahead of us and no time to lose."
"Where are we going?" Flintlock asked.
"To see an old friend."
FOUR
"There are many woes, but only one death"
- Russian proverb
Di Grizov had always been proud of his hands. They could crack any safe, disable the trickiest of alarms, and even undo the stays of the most sanctimonious dowager if a job required it. His fingernails were always immaculate, the palms smooth and warm, his grip firm and resolute. The hands of a grifter must never betray his origins or intentions, he had been fond of telling his apprentices over the years; they must reassure and satisfy all those they come into contact with. Di Grizov looked at his hands now and winced. He would have wept, if he'd any tears left to shed.
Just four days in the Murmansk Gulag had broken what little spirit was left in Di Grizov's body. Four days of hell on Earth, tearing at the walls of a mine with his bare hands, trying to claw out seams of glistening ore. With his legs gone, the grifter had been given a low trolley on wheels as his means of transportation, forcing him to propel it around the compound with his hands. Pleas for a pair of gloves were mocked or ignored. The gulag's commander, Josef Shitov, had laughed heartily at Di Grizov's request. A bear of a man, the veins on Shitov's shaven head bulged as he stood over the new prisoner.
"Where do you think you are, a holiday camp?" Shitov lovingly stroked his thick, black moustache while glaring at Di Grizov. "You came here to work! You eat when I say, you sleep when I say and you die when I say - understand?"
"But I need-"
"Need? All you need is to learn your place here, worm. This is my domain, and I shall do with you as I see fit." Shitov looked down and noticed a smudge on the gleaming surface of his boots. "For your first lesson, I want you to clean my boots. With your tongue."
That was four days ago. Four days of torture, ignominy and despair. Di Grizov would have killed himself long before now, if any simple method had been available to him. He even contemplated biting through the veins on his wrists in the hope of bleeding to death, but couldn't face that. Besides, he knew this torment couldn't last much longer. The mines were radioactive, having been used in the past as a storage facility for nuclear waste. Few prisoners lasted more than a month before the tumours and cancers took their lives.
Di Grizov studied his hands. The fingernails were broken and ragged-edged, the skin split open in several places, blisters mingled with each callous on the palms. They looked like a humble worker's hands now, with the hardened appearance of a lifetime spent in hard physical labour. Four days of hell had achieved that. What would they be like after four more days? But I'll be dead before that happens, the grifter thought. He welcomed the end. There probably was no life beyond this one, but oblivion had to be better than this place.
His grim contemplations were halted by the sound of sirens wailing outside. Di Grizov pushed his trolley to the nearest window and looked out of the barracks. The sun had long since set but the sky remained a pale blue overhead, thanks to the shortened nights of a northern summer, a full moon adding further illumination. Guards were rushing back and forth across the bleak, snow-strewn compound, shouting to each other and cursing in the local dialect. In centuries past the Murmansk region had been devoted to the sea and naval warfare. Now the remaining local people found work in the gulag, taking out their frustrations on the inmates.
It was good to see a little panic in the dead eyes of these slab-faced sadists, Di Grizov thought. But what could induce such a reaction? Perhaps one of the prisoners was trying to escape. Few had the strength or will to break out of this death camp, and those that did rarely made it past the first fence. The guards were particularly enthusiastic about hunting down would-be escapees, thanks to a generous reward on offer from Shitov. Nobody had every successfully broken out of the Murmansk Gulag and he was determined to maintain that record, promising a week's extra pay as a bonus for whoever succeeded in bringing down any prisoner trying to escape.
Di Grizov strained forwards and pressed an ear against the frozen glass of the nearest window, trying to catch what was being said outside. Shitov himself appeared to direct operations, trying to bring calm to the panicked ranks. "You fools! Stop and listen - let this enemy come to us. Let them walk between our pincers. Then we shall close in around them and feast on their folly!"
The grifter sat back in his trolley. Let the enemy come to us? If I didn't know better, I'd think somebody was trying to break into the gulag. But what kind of idiot would be stupid enough to attempt that?
Dante watched the high security compound sprawled below. A dozen wooden huts were arranged in rows of four, surrounded by guardhouses and a few rudimentary buildings - probably the kitchens and toilet block. At the far end stood several more elaborate structures. Three were large, superior versions of the wooden huts, but with smoke billowing from chimneys and interior lighting visible through the windows. Probably the guards' quarters, Dante reasoned. The elegant, almost palatial home beside them no doubt belonged to the gulag commander. Tall watchtowers stood in all four corners of the compound, the guards inside them sweeping mighty arc lights back and forth.
Beyond the gulag Dante could see a distant orange glow on the horizon. No doubt the light pollution was spilling from the Murmansk Alienation Zone, less than fifty miles away. The zone was an environmental disaster that had started more than five hundred years ago when some long-forgotten regime chose to abandon its fleet of war machines to the Arctic ravages of the Barents Sea. In the intervening centuries this military graveyard had welcomed more relics, its wrecks supposedly haunted by an armada of ghosts from the past. Few visited the alienation zone willingly.
Dante had been there only once, six years earlier, on a journey that changed his life forever. Captured by the Raven Corps, Dante was surprised to be despatched to Murmansk, along with the Tsar's daughter Jena. There they had encountered a two-headed robotic eagle, a Romanov Bird of Prey. The creature decided Dante was genetically suitable and initiated the bonding sequence that fused the Crest to his body.
Only later did Dante discover the Tsar had deliberately sent him to the alienation zone, knowing the thief was a basta
rd of the Romanov bloodline. The Tsar planned to have him dissected, allowing access to the Crest's secrets and neutering the Romanovs' greatest weapon. But Dante had escaped that fate and joined the house of his father instead. Six years on almost all the other Romanovs were dead. So much for the past.
Kopeck for your thoughts, the Crest said.
"I doubt they're worth that much to you," Dante replied.
Perhaps not, but it's hard to get change on a kopeck.
Dante couldn't help smiling. "I was just remembering when we first bonded. We've come a long way since then, Crest."
And yet you still refuse to listen to reason. Attacking a gulag single-handed is an act of suicide.
"I'm not single-handed. Spatchcock and Flintlock are busy creating a diversion on the far side of the compound."
Why you trust those two knaves I'll never know.
"Sometimes you have to let your heart do the thinking, Crest."
Well, it makes a change from your groin being in charge.
Dante sighed. "Have you finished hacking the gulag's security systems?"
Yes, they were so primitive. I've been triple-checking to see if something more sophisticated was lurking behind them.
"And was there?"
No. As a suitable task for my talents, it was like asking a watchmaker to repair a hammer. The defence grid should collapse right about... now.
In the valley below a cacophony of sirens and alarms suddenly fell silent. The generators maintaining the laser shield clattered to a halt and power drained away from the arc lights in the watchtowers. The gulag was defenceless, but for its cadre of armed guards and their commander.
"Time to stealth 'em up." Dante pulled the hood of his white cloak closer round his face before creeping down the snow-covered slope towards the outer perimeter. "Once we're inside the boundary line I'll need explicit instructions, Crest. I won't have time to search every building for Jim."
Spatchcock was loading sticky green pellets into his sidearm while Flintlock tended the bonfire. The pair had constructed a tower of dead wood from the snowy wasteland around the northern edge of the gulag and lit it on a signal from Dante. The cowardly Flintlock observed the nearest watchtower nervously, ready to scramble for cover at the first sign of danger. "Why do we always end up as the diversion? Why can't Nikolai risk his neck instead of us?"
"You want to swap places with him? Chance your arm breaking into a gulag guarded by two dozen thugs with enough guns to start a small war?"
"No, but I thought..." Flintlock shrugged helplessly. "Isn't there a less dangerous way for us to get their attention?"
"If there is, it's too late," Spatchcock replied, pointing a finger towards the gulag's perimeter. "Here they come!"
A dozen guards were marching towards the bonfire, all bearing pulse rifles and grim expressions. By the time they reached the blaze, the two arsonists had retreated to an abandoned hut nearby. Spatchcock clambered onto the roof and took aim with his sidearm. Flintlock was cowering at ground level, peering round a corner at the confused guards. His hands were shaking so much it was proving difficult to load a green pellet into his weapon.
"Why do I have to use the slingshot?" Flintlock protested.
"Stop whining and start firing," Spatchcock snapped. Ahead of him, half the guards had finished examining the bonfire and were fanning out, in search of the culprits. "They're coming into range... now!" Spatchcock shot first, the green pellet splattering as it hit the chest of the nearest enemy.
The guard looked down at his uniform in dismay, scowling at the viscous emerald substance slowly dribbling down his chest. He dipped a gloved finger into the liquid, peered at it and then brought it close to his nose for a sniff.
"That's it..." Spatchcock urged. "Get a good whiff of that."
The guard inhaled sharply. Disgust crossed his features, rapidly followed by horror. His cheeks billowed outwards for a moment, before projectile vomit spat forth from his mouth and both nostrils. At the same time a splattering sound could be heard from the guard's trousers, their seat suddenly becoming heavier. The unfortunate man crumpled to his knees, one hand trying to stop the spray from his mouth while another clutched at his rear.
"Gotcha!" Spatchcock snarled happily. "Purge juice one, guards nil."
"You mean that vile concoction of yours works?" Flintlock spluttered.
"Course it does - now get firing! We hit enough of those goons, the rest won't want to come any closer."
Slipping into the gulag proved simplicity itself once the Crest had disabled most of the security systems. The rest of the safeguards had been designed to stop prisoners breaking out, not prevent anyone from breaking in. Dante moved among the shadows, avoiding most of the guards and bluffing his way past the rest. Panic was in charge of the situation for now, but Dante knew that could not last forever. He found Di Grizov at the third attempt, discovering his old mentor inside a frozen wooden hut. Dante found it hard to believe the broken, shrivelled man on the trolley was once the Empire's greatest escapologist.
"Jim? Is that you?"
"Nikolai? What are you doing here?"
Dante closed the door and hurried to the grifter's side. "I've come to get you out of here. Your niece sent me."
"My niece? I don't have a niece. I don't have any family, at least none still alive. I was an only child."
"But then who was...?" Dante frowned. "I met a young woman. She said you bribed a guard to carry a message for her out of the gulag."
Di Grizov laughed bitterly. "Chance would be a fine thing, Nikolai. The bastards in this place wouldn't piss on you if you were burning alive."
"I don't understand - she knew you'd lost your legs. She said they'd been amputated to stop you escaping."
"Yes, but not here. That happened somewhere else."
Dante shook his head. "It doesn't matter how I found you. The important thing now is getting you out."
Di Grizov shook his head. "It's too late for me, Nikolai. I'm dying. You could be killed trying to save me and for what? I'll only live a few more days, a week at least. Get away from here, save yourself."
"No! I came here to help you, Jim-"
"You have already," the grifter replied. "You've given me a chance to say something that's been nagging at me for twelve years - I'm sorry."
"I don't-"
"Hush." Di Grizov pressed his broken, battered hands against Dante's mouth, silencing him. "I'm sorry I tricked you at the Casino Royale, how I treated you. You deserved better from me."
"It's okay, Jim. Leaving me there, it taught me a lot. I learned how to get myself out of danger, how to make the most out of an impossible situation. Trust me, they've been useful skills in the last few years."
"I know. I've been following your career. Quite a dash you've cut through the ranks of high society."
Dante smiled. "But I never forgot where I came from, and that's thanks to you. You taught me to always remember my origins, stand on my own two feet."
"Well, that's more than I can do now..." Di Grizov rested a hand on the stumps were his legs had been. "Tell me more about this woman who contacted you. Maybe I'll remember her."
Dante quickly outlined his encounter at the bar in Famous Flora's. "She said you had a retirement fund. I'm supposed to mention the codename for it and you'll tell me where to find the money."
The grifter raised an eyebrow. "I don't have a rouble to my name. My life's been one disaster after another, ever since the day I stole that damned egg. I spent all my savings staying out of the gulags - and look where it's got me."
Outside the hut a burly voice was cursing the guards, urging them to begin a thorough search of the buildings. "Friend of yours?" Dante asked.
"Josef Shitov, the barbarous bastard that runs this place."
"We're running out of time, Jim - we should get out while we still can."
"I told you, I'm not leaving," the grifter maintained. "I'll die here. It's as bad a place as any to end my days." His brow furrowed. "I tho
ught I knew who might have sent you here, but the woman you described doesn't match her. You mentioned a codename - what was it?"
"The Strangelove Gambit."
Di Grizov's face hardened. "It's not a codename, Nikolai. It's a warning," he snorted with disgust.
"A warning? About what?"
"My legs were amputated before I was brought here. The man who took them was Karl Fabergè."
"The doctor you stole the egg from?"
Di Grizov nodded. "Fabergè has prospered since our first encounter. He has a private island off the Black Sea coastline, complete with its own castle. The island is home to an exclusive school called by the Fabergè Institute, but that's a front for his real work."
Dante could hear guards stomping around inside the nearest wooden hut, tipping over tables and bunks. In less than a minute the sentries would be searching this barrack. Dante reached one arm under his former mentor's stumps and another round his back.
"Nikolai, what are you doing? I said I don't want to be rescued. I just want to die!" Di Grizov protested.
"Maybe. But I don't like taking no for an answer," Dante replied, lifting the grifter from his trolley. "You of all people should know that about me."
Spatchcock watched with satisfaction as the guards retched their guts out on the snow. Judging by the chorus of wet farts bursting from their trousers, the purge juice had also debilitated them at the other end. "Mission accomplished!" he announced happily, climbing down from the roof.
Flintlock had tied a scarf round the lower half of his face, masking his mouth and nostrils from the vile stench being emitted by the stricken guards.
Spatchcock was checking his pockets. "You got any more pellets left?"