by Simon Logan
But this time she merely glances at them before suddenly becoming rigid, and she looks down the corridor, past the window of the lab he has concealed himself within, then ducks into a storage cupboard.
Dracyev leaves the lab, walks toward the cupboard.
“. . . told you not to call me like this. What’s happened? Is something the matter?”
Ylena’s voice.
Dracyev’s jaw flexes.
He hears the buzz of a cell phone.
“It’s too dangerous,” she says. “What if he catches us? Okay. I’m just scared that . . . I miss you. I have to go . . .”
Then silence.
Dracyev steps to one side and waits. Several moments pass, then the door opens a crack but facing away from him. Ylena steps out.
She closes the door.
He says, “Ylena.” Soft. Firm. Accusing. Questioning. Loving.
She jumps with fright but before she can say anything he leans in toward her.
“Here you are,” he says. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“I needed to stretch my legs,” she tells him. “I was getting claustrophobic locked up in that room.”
His eyes go to the cupboard door behind her.
“I felt sick,” she tells him. “I thought it was a bathroom.”
“You were sick?”
“No.”
“Perhaps you’ve caught a bug or something. An infection.”
“Perhaps.”
He places a hand on her shoulder, runs it along until he reaches her neck, slides his gloved fingers around her.
“You should go back to your room. Rest. Then you’ll feel better.”
“Yes,” she says.
“Besides, I have a surprise for you — later tonight. I want you to be ready for it.”
“A surprise?”
He smiles and his fingers leave her shoulder and slide down her chest. “Go rest for now. I’ll send someone for you later.”
Ylena nods, and he leans in to kiss her, his mouth still dusted with chemicals, and he spreads them into her bloodstream as if they are a marker.
A territorial warning.
He watches her as she walks away, and she turns as she reaches the end of the corridor, glances back at him momentarily, then is gone.
Dracyev’s nostrils flare and he immediately strides past the guinea pigs and into a large lab at the rear of the building. There are four technicians inside, all of whom stiffen subtly when they notice Dracyev enter. He grabs a phone from the wall and punches in a number.
“I need to speak to you. I’m in Lab 67. I’ll wait for you in the courtyard.”
He hangs up, storms out of the room and through a back exit that leads out into one of the few open spaces in the complex. The ground is swept over with dust and miscellaneous powders, stained with dark blotches of varying colour.
A few minutes pass, then he sees the dark, lumbering shape of one of his bodyguards splintering the sunlight. “Ylena is to remain in her room, Takashi,” he tells the man, with stubble like a felled forest covering his broad chin and jaw. “I want you to make sure your men are watching her but if she tries to get out, I want you to let her.”
“Sir.”
“If she leaves the room, I want you to contact me and follow her discreetly. Do you understand?”
“Sir. Is there a problem, sir?”
Dracyev shakes his head as he walks away. “No problem.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Mr. Dracyev?”
Sitting in the car, the window rolled down, his chemical-dipped cigarette a little red light amidst the shining black carapace of the vehicle.
“I see her, Takashi.”
“Do you want me to . . . ?”
“No,” Dracyev says, and flicks his cigarette out the window. “I’ll deal with this.”
He gets out of the car, wraps his trench coat around himself.
“You want me to wait here, sir?”
He waves a hand as he walks away. “Go back to the labs, Takashi. I’ll be back later.”
And toward the hustle and bustle of the workers who shift the crates and boxes and packages around the docks and onto the waiting boat. He sees Ylena’s bleached hair in the near distance, hangs back to watch her.
And there he is.
Half hidden behind a group of workers but it would be him, it would be Januscz.
That fucker.
Dracyev considers just ending it all now with the gun strapped to his thigh but there’s something poetic about all this, something that urges him toward the idea that this is how things were meant to happen all along. That perhaps whatever gods there might be have plans for the mule and for Ylena.
He loses sight of them both behind the workers, walks briskly toward the shore but still can’t see them. It doesn’t matter, though, there is only one place they would be going. Fate had already decided and it had brought Dracyev here to witness it all.
So be it.
He takes another cigarette out, lights it up, and walks calmly toward the boat.
He steps past a pair of workers trying to secure a support belt around a damaged crate and ascends the ramp without hesitation. A look of anger momentarily passes across the face of the bearded man at the top of the ramp but it quickly falls away.
“Mr. Dracyev,” he stutters. “You . . . nobody said that you would be coming tonight.
“Change of plans,” Dracyev tells him. “Don’t worry — consider this a social visit.”
The man laughs uncomfortably just as the five-minute signal sounds. He motions to the ground crews to finish up as Dracyev descends into the belly of the boat.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
He thinks it’s an animal of some kind about to launch an attack on him when he first hears the sound, but as he fights through the slurry that his consciousness has become, he realizes it is the boat’s horn.
The boat.
Kohl sits up quickly, far too quickly, and it feels like his head just about detaches itself from his body and he swoons back to the ground below, only just getting his hands out in time to stop himself crashing down onto the hard concrete.
He touches the place on his head where there is a burning pain, feels that it is sticky. There’s a puddle of quickly drying blood beneath him. His blood.
He looks up at the moon above, trying to sort himself out, clear and organize his thoughts, and it’s only then that he realizes his goggles are gone and more pain shoots through him, through his eyeballs and into the centre of his head. He finds the shattered remains of the glasses on the ground beneath him and some fragment of memory flashes across him.
Nikolai . . .
Nikolai . . . and the vial.
He checks his pockets — once, twice, again, no!
The vial is gone. Stolen.
“FUCK!” he screams and delivers another wicked blast of pain to his cranium.
That fucker has fucked me over again!
And the anger is a slow-burning explosion rising in his gut.
He tries to stand but his legs are weak and shaky and they collapse beneath his weight.
The dock is almost clear now, only a few crates left. The activity has dropped off. He looks at his watch and it’s only a few minutes to midnight. The boat is about to leave.
So he does all he can, crawls across the ground toward one of the few remaining crates, a pair of them side by side with a large pallet that rests underneath them both. He pulls himself into the tiny gap between them just as one of the forklift trucks shoves its blades into the pallet and begins to lift. The noise of the machine drives nails into his head but he bears down on it, focusing on the image of Nikolai’s face, focusing on what he will do to the little bastard when he finds him.
The vial is his.
And this time he’ll make sure Nikolai gets what he deserves.
PART ELEVEN
CONVERGENCE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The whole boat rattles and creaks as it leaves the do
cks and Katja is certain she hears the sound of bolts and screws popping out, of parts of the bulkhead peeling away. Will this thing even make it to the mainland?
She finishes pulling off the orange loader’s overalls, drags her hair back. The liberty spikes have sagged into egg-yolked splinters so she breaks them up a little more, peels the hair behind her ears.
“Needing a hand there?” she asks.
Nikolai is on his back, his legs in the air, the lower half of the overalls wrapped around him. One hand has a hold of his boot, the other seems to be trapped within the tangle of material.
Katja grabs his leg and gives it one sudden tug, drags him across the floor a few inches before the overalls pop loose. His boot comes off, clatters to the metal ground and they both freeze.
They’re in a claustrophobic cell of a room next to the storage bays in the belly of the boat, the first place they had found that would allow them to change out of the overalls. They listen for the sound of someone coming, but hear only the scrapes and echoes of the crates and boxes moving against one another.
Katja opens up the box that the pair of them had dragged on board and inside, resting on a bedding of hundreds of little electrical components, is her guitar. She pulls it out and examines it.
“Couldn’t you have just left that thing behind?” Nikolai asks.
“Fuck no — it’s gotten us this far hasn’t it?” She ran her fingers along a fracture that had emerged at the top of the neck between the third and fourth frets, grimacing.
“I still think it wasn’t necessary to hit him that hard.”
“Hey, we’re here aren’t we? We got on board.”
Nikolai shrugs in agreement.
“Now we just need to find the man in red.”
“The what?”
“The one who’s going to do the deal with us. He’s going to be wearing red, Januscz told me. Now remember, Nikolai, you are Januscz, okay?”
“Okay.”
“We’re together.”
Nods. “Okay.”
They climb a short set of steps that lead back up toward the deck and quietly sneak out when the coast is clear.
“Is he on board? How do we find him?”
“I don’t know,” Katja admits.
The wind is biting cold, the upper deck mostly deserted though a few figures were silhouetted against the glow of the mainland’s lights. Katja stares out toward them, smiles as she fingers the vial in her pocket. She thinks of Januscz lying in a pool of his own blood, of Kohl lying in a pool of his own blood, of Szerynski lying in a pool of his own blood. All that death and violence and yet through it all they have made it to the boat, and with the vial. They are almost there.
They walk up the side of the boat, sticking close to the doors that lead back down into the lower decks and Katja spots someone up ahead. She presses herself against a doorway, pulling Nikolai in beside her. The figure seems to be facing the other direction but the moonlight is bleaching everything; she can’t tell what colour his clothes are.
The he turns and it feels like the boat really is collapsing, the decking falling away from under her and she’s spiralling into the dark waters below.
“Dracyev.”
The word escapes her lips, frosts in the air and dissipates.
“What?” Nikolai whispers.
“What the fuck is going on?”
She presses them both fully back into the doorway, her heart now racing.
“Shit, shit, shit.”
“Katja, what is it? Did you see him?”
She shakes her head.
“Dracyev. Something’s going on, Nikolai. I don’t know, but I think this might be a trap.”
“What do you mean? Dracyev the chemical dealer?”
“The one that set up the deal tonight. Januscz worked for him.”
“What’s he doing here?”
“That’s what I fucking mean, you idiot!”
She says it louder than she intended, ducks her head back out momentarily to check that Dracyev didn’t hear, but his figure, back now turned, remains where it was.
“Something, something’s happening. Why would he be here? Januscz never said he would be on the boat. Why would he need Januscz to smuggle the vial if he was going to be here himse . . .”
And her words drift off as something occurs to her — what if Dracyev knows what she did to Januscz? What if he was here for her?
“We have to get off deck,” she says, ducks back out again.
Dracyev is gone.
Gone.
Momentary relief, then the question — gone where?
“Katja?” Nikolai whispers.
And Dracyev is there, at the end of the block of doors, coming around the corner only ten or twelve feet away, and without hesitation Katja turns and runs and Nikolai looks around, sees the figure up ahead, takes off after her. He chases her across the deck, past two workers trying to light their cigarettes in the wind, and she is grabbing at the door handles as she passes them, each one locked and slipping from her fingers.
Nikolai glances over his shoulder, sees that Dracyev seems to be jogging after them, turns back and Katja has found an open door and she dives through and it’s swinging quickly shut behind her and he grabs at it but it’s already shut and there’s a heavy clunk. He snatches at the handle but a lock must have engaged and it won’t open.
“Katja!” he shouts at the door, bangs on it.
“It’s locked itself!” comes the muffled response from the other side. “I can’t fucking . . . shit! It’s locked, Nikolai! You’ll have to find somewhere else! Quick!”
“But . . .”
Glances again, the long-coated bulk of Dracyev coming toward him and he takes off, ducks around another gap in the doors and up along a tight passageway until he pops out on the other side of the boat. Tries one door, another, another, finally one opens and he jumps inside.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The stench of ripe fruit thick around them, they are wrapped around each other in the darkness, existing only through touch, hands upon one another.
Then light floods in and the smuggler is standing there, crowbar in hand.
“Walk around if you want, stretch your legs. But don’t go far. It only takes us about half an hour to reach the mainland and if you want to get off at the other side, you need to be back here in time for the loading to commence — you do not want to be caught out trying to smuggle yourselves across, and don’t expect me to cover for you if you are. I’ve already contacted one of the loaders on the mainland; he’ll look out for your crate and make sure no one checks it out. It’s a little choppy out there tonight, though — perhaps you’d rather stay where you are.”
And there’s a salacious tone to his voice that makes them pull apart guiltily. They get to their feet and climb out of the crate. Ylena brushes off her overcoat, tucks some loose strands of hair behind her ear.
“You okay? You’re looking a little . . . green,” the smuggler mocks.
Aleksakhina waves him away, unable to say anything because he feels if he opens his mouth his stomach contents will quickly be unloaded onto the floor beneath him. He presses a hand to his mouth, leans against one of the other crates.
The smuggler shrugs and walks off, crowbar over his shoulder, shouts a reminder to them about being back at the crate and then is gone.
“Are you okay?” Ylena asks, putting a hand on Aleksakhina’s shoulder.
He nods a little too vigorously and dry heaves once, twice.
He hunches over for a few moments, then straightens up. “I’m fine,” he says. “Sorry. I guess I’m just not used to it.
“It’s okay. I’ll be okay.”
“Do you want to come up on deck, get some fresh air?”
“I don’t . . . I think it might be worse out there. If I see the waves . . .”
“Anatoli, they’re the same waves that we both looked out at each night from the island.”
“I know,” he says. “You go. I just need a
minute.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“You’re not leaving me. I’ll be right here. Go on. Go see what’s waiting for us.”
And the prospect softens her face into a smile. “Really? You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. Tonight, tonight, Ylena, we will be able to look at the waves again together — but this time we won’t be trapped on that fucking island. We can go wherever we want.”
She leans in and kisses him, and she leaves with him a sweet, vanilla scent.
“I’ll join you soon,” he tells her.
She kisses him again, then climbs the metal steps that lead up toward deck.
“Ylena?” he calls to her.
She stops, turns.
“Be careful,” he says.
She blows him a final kiss. “I will.”
CHAPTER FORTY
It had only been because the woman had turned and run when he had looked at her that Dracyev chased after her and the man she was with. For a brief moment he had believed that perhaps it was Ylena, that she had disguised herself, but the notion quickly passed.
He knew every part of Ylena, each muscle and groove, and the way this other woman moved was far too clumsy — she lacked Ylena’s grace and the beauty of her movement. The woman vanished through a doorway, the man she was with taking a different route and slipping into a passageway farther up.
Dracyev stops where he is.
Whatever else might be going down on the boat tonight was none of his business. He has only one thing to do tonight.
One thing.
He walks back along the starboard side of the boat, stands by the rails. The boat is rocking gently as the tides moved beneath it, a lyrical rise and fall that is almost hypnotic as he stares out to sea. And then his fingers clench around the railing.