The Circus of Machinations

by Chris Ward

  ‘Some kind of depository.’

  ‘Of what?’

  Victor looked so excited Patricia thought he might burst.

  ‘Of machines,’ he said.

  20

  The end of everything

  Lifting his head from the armchair and wiping the weariness out of his eyes, Robert Mortin took a moment to register the knocking as coming from the house’s rear door, rather than the front. As a muffled voice called his name, he remembered the phone call the night before and climbed up from the chair, shouting that he was coming. He didn’t bother to adjust his appearance—two days now since he had changed his clothes, washed or shaved—after all, he was a grieving father.

  The police had found his son’s body the night before, partially buried in snow not far from St Peter’s Place. Esel had been shot with some sort of explosive bullet that had penetrated his chest before wreaking havoc among his internal organs. The cold had preserved the body remarkably well, and until Mortin had looked on the wound he could almost have believed his son was sleeping.

  That was one that needed to be avenged. He hoped there wouldn’t be another.

  He opened the door to reveal two grizzled men standing there in thick woollen jackets, their faces chapped and raw. Sergei Papanov and Yevgeny Franko. Ordinarily Robert would have turned his nose up at the sight of their sour, weather-beaten faces, the ghost of years of petty crime flickering in their eyes, but they were men who would do anything for coin. Papanov held out a bag.

  ‘We did as you asked, Mortin,’ he said. ‘The good news, if you look at it that way, is that we didn’t find her body.’

  Robert looked up. ‘Could she be alive?’

  ‘I doubt it, but we found no bodies at all. Above the third floor the rubble was too thick, but we got down into the basements through an old ventilation shaft. There were the signs that some poor bastard was squatting down there, but no sign of your daughter. It’s possible she got out somehow that we haven’t figured yet.’

  ‘Or she could have been crushed in the rubble.’

  The man opened the bag and pulled out a square of silk. An elaborate floral pattern was soiled by dust and oil. At the sight of it Robert sagged, reaching out for the doorframe to support himself.

  ‘My daughter….’

  ‘Did this belong to her?’

  ‘Her handkerchief. She took it everywhere.’

  ‘It was in the lowest basement apartment. It was the only thing that wasn’t … putrid. She had been in there, either before or after the drone strike.’

  Robert nodded. He went back into the kitchen and pulled a fat envelope from a drawer. Their work had cost him dear, but if it proved Patricia might still be alive, it was worth it.

  ‘I want you to continue your search for another day. I have money.’

  Franko stepped forward, putting a hand on Robert’s doorframe. ‘We need no more of your money, Mortin,’ he said. ‘We want passage on the train. The last one. We know you’ve got places on it, and we’re pretty sure you can find a couple of spares if need be.’

  Mortin hesitated. ‘You’ll have it when I have absolute proof of whether she is living or dead. Bring me that and it’s yours.’

  ‘Don’t try to cheat us, Mortin,’ Papanov said, his voice low.

  They were both big men, heavily muscled, and with the kind of ugly faces that on another day Robert might have tried to bloody up, but he held his temper and his tongue. While both men now worked in the twilight world beneath the eyes of the law, Sergei had once worked in the mining industry as a specialist in mine rescue. Few other men in Brevik could have got inside the collapsed dormitory building, and no others would have done it without authorization from City Hall. Mortin had needed to call in a favour.

  ‘Absolute proof,’ he said again.

  ‘We’ll get it,’ Franko said, stepping back from the door. Robert closed it and returned to the living room.

  Upstairs, Isabella was still sleeping. He had slipped a couple of pills into a glass of wine to get her out of his way for a while. Her endless laments of sorrow were grating and of no help to anyone.

  Where was that useless boyfriend of hers when anyone needed him?

  Mortin paused, one hand resting on the drink cabinet where he kept the kind of whisky that could help him through a crisis like this.

  Where was Victor indeed?

  Lena found it impossible to relax as the car bumped along the bombed out remains of the old highway. It had taken an hour to get through the many military roadblocks, but once they left the last soldiers behind a strange feeling of loneliness had set in. She was taking her turn driving, while Boris, one of her aides, slept in the back, and Stepan, the other, scanned the darkening countryside with a pair of binoculars from the passenger seat. Their inherent professionalism made the men poor company, and hours at a time would pass without a word uttered among them. As the vastness of the Siberian countryside stirred a sense of agoraphobia in her, she wished for just a little banality, anything to break the tension.

  The highway was eerily deserted. From a few miles out of the city they began to pass the occasional abandoned car, some with their tyres blown out, others gutted by fire. The highway itself had been hit by drone strikes near the city, but further away it was more intact.

  At last, Stepan stirred in the passenger seat beside her, dropping the binoculars and turning around.

  ‘Lights,’ he said.

  ‘A house?’

  Yeltzin scoffed. ‘Not with electricity. Not out here.’

  ‘Then what? A patrol?’

  He gave a brief shake of his head. ‘Not likely.’

  ‘Then what? One of those robots?’

  ‘It’s not moving. Stop the car and let’s go take a look.’

  The idea was crazy, but the journey was driving her that way too. Getting out of the confines of the car for a few minutes might make her feel better. She pulled in to the curb and climbed out, leaving the engine running to conserve the car’s heat.

  It was bitterly cold outside, the temperature dipping into the minus double digits. After full night fell it would drop even further, to minus twenty or more, so cold that switching off the car might mean they never got it started again. They were sticking to the same routine they had on the way out, driving all night and sleeping in shifts, then stopping for a few hours late morning to rest the car.

  The scent of something dangerous excited her, she had to admit. Back in her secret service days nothing had compared with the thrill of the chase; both the fugitives she hunted and the men she desired.

  She drew her gun, a GSh-18 semi-automatic. Stepan gave her a thin smile and pulled his own weapon, an American-made Glock. In his eyes she recognised the same hunger for action.

  ‘Let’s go,’ she whispered, after Stepan had woken Boris and ordered him to guard the vehicle. Lena took the lead, climbing up over a drift of snow and moving slowly through an ice-packed field towards the cluster of houses where Stepan had seen the light.

  As they approached what appeared to be a small cooperative farming operation, with five outlying houses with barns, sheds and silos scattered among them, Stepan took the lead while Lena covered him, the pair moving in a zigzag to provide cover for each other until they reached the nearest building.

  Stepan knelt down while Lena caught up. ‘Round there,’ he said. ‘The barn at four o’clock, second from the right. I saw it again.’

  ‘Inside?’

  He nodded. ‘It could be dangerous.’

  Lena smiled. Danger was the only thing she truly loved. It made her want to fight; it made her want to fuck. It made her want to give up everything for one last rush of adrenaline.

  ‘Let’s check it out,’ she said.

  This time Lena took the lead, wanting to be the first to see inside the shed. Stepan hung back, covering her until she had reached the wall. When she had found a secure position, she waved him forward and he joined her just a few feet from the doorway.

  They could
hear sounds now, the hiss and click of machinery coming from inside.

  ‘On three,’ Lena said. Stepan raised an eyebrow, perhaps querying her order to charge, but he didn’t object. He held her gaze as he gave a slight nod.

  ‘On three,’ he repeated.

  ‘For Russia,’ Lena said. ‘For our great nation. For its people, and its ideals.’ She stood up, the gun held at her shoulder. ‘One, two … three.’

  She burst through the door, dropping immediately down to the right, the gun trained in front of her on the cluster of figures in the middle of the room. Stepan followed her in, dropping away to the left, executing a neat roll and coming up behind a pile of boxes.

  A few heads had turned towards her, and Lena didn’t hesitate, pulling the trigger on the nearest, closing her eyes on the horror as the bullet found a mark.

  ‘Run, Stepan,’ she cried. ‘Run for your life!’

  She broke through the doorway and bolted for the cover of the building they had first approached. The sound of running feet came from behind her, then a mechanical whine followed by a gasp and a heavy thump as something fell, and she knew Stepan wouldn’t make it back. Firing her gun back over her shoulder, she reached the corner of the building and ducked around it, making straight for the field and her vehicle beyond. She heard the sounds of pursuit but didn’t look back, didn’t dare or the fear might freeze her where she stood.

  She had kept in shape, but by the time she got within a few metres of the car her strength was almost at an end. ‘Start driving!’ she screamed at Boris, and for once was thankful for his professionalism. He had jumped into the front and the car was moving forward in a slow crawl as Lena hit the road in a flat out sprint.

  Behind her she felt fingers clawing at air as they tried to reach her, but she felt in her heart that she would not be claimed today, that while her own death might await her soon, it would hold off for a short while yet. It was waiting at her shoulder, but it would have to wait a little longer.

  She screamed as she caught hold of the door Boris had flung open and pulled herself inside as the engine roared and the car jerked forward.

  ‘What the fuck are they?’ Boris was screaming at her, his voice hoarse and cracked. ‘What the fuck are they?’

  Lena pulled the door shut and turned to look back. Three shadowy figures were receding into the gloom, the chase abandoned. She couldn’t make out their features, but she remembered the cold touch of their fingers on her neck. It was a sensation that would give her nightmares for weeks.

  ‘Where’s Stepan?’ Boris asked, glancing back as the car bumped along, slowly gaining speed as it left the last traces of civilization behind.

  ‘He didn’t make it,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘What were those things, Lena?’

  She shook her head. Only time would let her make sense of them herself. She gave a slow shake of the head, and let out a long sigh.

  ‘They were the end of everything,’ she said. ‘The end of us, of Russia, of the world.’

  21

  The tightening noose

  Patricia and Kurou were sleeping, the girl leaning back against a filing cabinet with a dirty blanket draped over her, and Kurou curled up like a stray cat in a space between two junked machines. Patricia was still tied, but despite Kurou’s insistence that she suffer, Victor had replaced the rope in her mouth with a strip of softer towel. He had got no thanks for his efforts, but it had eased his conscience a little.

  The gas heater gave them a circle of warmth about ten feet wide, beyond which the cold gradually began to set in. They had moved a few cabinets to try to hold the heat in better, but there was little they could do. In truth, Victor had never stayed overnight in the workshop outside of the summer months, and during the winter he worked with the heater stood at his feet. The place was too big to keep adequately warm and while Kurou preferred the cold, Victor was genuinely afraid for himself and Patricia. He had dozed off a couple of times, but he was too worried that the gas would run out and he’d wake up in a room with two corpses.

  Or not wake up at all.

  At first light they would head for the hills, but under cover of darkness it was too dangerous to attempt the journey, particularly with Patricia refusing to cooperate. The more time he spent with Kurou, the less Victor feared him, regarding him more like a dangerous pet that needed to be controlled. Kurou was still fearsome, but he responded to authoritative commands like a naughty child, and while there were moments when Victor still worried for his life, he had begun to experiment with the tones of his voice to see which ones had the most influence. Victor had got his way with removing Patricia’s rope, and also that she have her hands tied around the front instead of the back, but when he had suggested that they set her free, the monster inside Kurou had bubbled back to the surface and Victor had backed down.

  It was a strange feeling, being hunted. If Patricia had found Esel’s body then others would have by now, and if Kurou was right that someone was watching his apartment then he was a wanted man.

  The euphoria he had felt about the prospect of going up to the secret place was dying down. Kurou’s genius with machines kept making him forget the rest, that the man was a killer and that they had a hostage in tow. Perhaps there was still part of a child in him, willing to overlook so much bad in order to get a little closer to his dreams. The right thing to do would be to free Patricia and either escape with her, or set her free to alert the authorities to Kurou’s presence before he hurt anyone else.

  Something wouldn’t let him, though. He tried to tell himself it was his own cowardice, but that was a lie. It was Kurou himself. The man was special. Behind the monstrous visage was a person of precocious ability. Victor had lived his whole life in this nowhere town with nothing but his dreams and hopes. Kurou was a living embodiment of possibility. Victor had opened the curtains on to a burning bright sun that was so beautiful he couldn’t bring himself to look away, even if at some deeper level it was slowly eating him up.

  The heater stuttered. Victor sat up. He stared at it for a few seconds as if willing it to keep on chugging, but the oil gauge was teetering on empty. He would have to find more oil from somewhere, or at least some blankets. There was nothing in the workshop. There was oil at his house, but going back there was too great a risk.

  Before he could talk himself out of it, he pulled on his boots and headed for the door. His idea was a stupid one, akin to putting his head into a lion’s mouth, but he could think of nothing else. He had been at Isabella’s house enough times to know where Mortin hung the key to the outhouse in which his burner oil was kept. It wasn’t too far; he could make the trip in twenty minutes if he ran.

  He pulled the door open and slipped out into the cold, gasping for breath against the freezing air as he slid the door shut behind him. It was a ridiculous idea—not to mention criminal—but he had talked himself into it. There was no letting go now.

  Pulling his hood tightly down over his face, he turned and dashed off into the night.

  There were lights on in Isabella’s kitchen as Victor came to a lung-churning stop on the alleyway outside the back of the Mortin house. The locked outhouse stood at the end of an icy path leading down a set of steps from the back door and across what in summertime was a pretty little garden. The key was in a wooden nesting box hanging from the wall beside the door. Why Mortin kept it there, Victor didn’t know, but it had always been there and he hoped that Mortin hadn’t decided on a whim to change its location.

  Half of the path was illuminated by the light from the back kitchen window. Victor wondered if it was wise having lights on after the recent drone strikes, but figured if anyone was in the know about what was going on, it was Robert Mortin. The man had his fingers in more pockets than most people had trousers, a network of connections that had got him far in the mining industry and kept him out of trouble with the government. Isabella rarely talked about her mother, but Victor guessed the same ruthlessness that had made Mortin rich had als
o made him a widower.

  He crept up the path, trying to scuff his feet so that the footprints he had no choice but to leave might be more easily covered over in the event of a fresh fall of snow. He reached the back door and crouched as a shadow fell across the curtains in the window above him, holding his breath even though no sound could be heard through the thick double layer of glass.

  Aware that the door might open at any moment, Victor reached up and slipped the key out of its box, putting it in his pocket. When he glanced back up at the window, the shadow had gone, so he crept back down the path and let himself into the shed where Mortin kept his kerosene tanks.

  Several were too heavy to lift, but Victor managed to find a five litre plastic canister in a corner and a pump with which to fill it out of one of the larger tanks. He was just stepping out of the shed when he looked up and saw Isabella standing in an upstairs window.

  For a few seconds he was dumbstruck, loitering there at the end of the path like a latter day oil commercial version of Romeo, the canister of kerosene a postmodern bouquet of flowers. Isabella went to the window and appeared to place a hand on her heart, as if dreaming of some lost lover, then she swept the curtains shut in a single frantic motion. For a moment Victor thought she had seen him, and he wondered whether he ought to take the chance that Mortin was out and knock on the door. The urge to speak to her was overwhelming, even if it was to incur her wrath at his absence.

  And then he turned to leave and realised she had been staring at the two men now blocking his path.

  They were both far bigger than him, their wide shoulders and thick chests only exemplified by the thick coats they wore. Hired muscle or underworld henchmen, Victor didn’t feel the need to guess, but either way they could crush the life out of him with a single clap of their hands.

  If he took them on, he would be squashed like a rotten fruit. If he tried to run they would catch him in seconds.