by Chad Huskins
For a fraction of a second, Zakhar’s eyes widened, but he controlled his surprise and remained calm. “You?”
“Good brandy in Derbent. Good scenery, too. Nice, sleepy little city. Lots of ancient structures. A mixed and cultured people. Peaceful. Not the kind o’ town you would associate with people who have your kind of arrangement.” The gunman let that sit in the air between them. He glanced at the windows. The wind was getting even harsher, and great chunks of snow were smacking up against the side of the lodge. “I saw you got chains on the front tires o’ that SUV outside. Do ya have any more chains for the rear tires?”
Zakhar nodded slowly, calmly. “Yes, of course. I could show you where—”
“Don’t you fuckin’ move,” said the gunman evenly. Zakhar froze. He had just started to turn for the door, aiming the right side of his body away from the gunman, so that he couldn’t see his hand moving to the holster. Now, the gunman sighed, looked him up and down appraisingly. “Just tell me where they are.”
The logs were being consumed by flame in the fireplace, and the fire was now crackling at his side. Zakhar was close to the flames, and felt his palms growing sweaty, though not just because of the heat. All at once, he was becoming increasingly aware of his isolation. The isolation that had once brought such sweet solitude and respite was now a trap. Even on a clear day, without wind or rain, a man could fire a gun outside and not be heard by anyone for many kilometers around. “The chains?” he said. “You…you want to know about the—”
“Yeah, Vladimir, I want the goddam chains. I parked my rental car a good ways away from here, hiked in on foot. How d’ya think I got way out here without leaving any tire tracks in the snow?” He snorted out a laugh. “I don’t wanna chance hiking back to it, not in this weather.”
Zakhar thought that that little fact might spring hope. Maybe he’s just on the run. A desperate man, just needs a vehicle to get clear of here. But that was a false hope. Hadn’t he just said he had been to Derbent? And he obviously knew things. Things about the others. “The chains are behind a pegboard in the shed. I can show you.”
“Just tell me. An’ the gas, too.”
He swallowed, eyes darting towards the Glock, back at his intruder’s eyes. “The pegboard is in a hidden closet in the shed. Where…” He swallowed again. “Where the poster with the big bear is hanging. The petrol is in there, too.”
“Petrol?” he said.
“Da. Er, yes. Fuel.”
“Oh, right,” said the gunman, glancing out one of the windows. “We say gasoline back in the States.” He looked back at Zakhar. “That’s where I’m from, ya know? The States. You ever been to Georgia?” Zakhar shook his head. “No? Ya know anybody from Atlanta?” Zakhar shook his head. The gunman gave a teasing smile. “Awwww, c’mon now, Zakhar. Don’t lie to me. You can do this. You’re a big boy.”
“I don’t follow y—”
“Oh, for Christ’s sakes, man! You really can’t say it, can you? Huh? Can you?” He chuckled, glanced out the window, and Zakhar’s fingers touched the sandalwood grip of his Colt just as the gunman looked back at him. “Ya sit out here in the middle o’ nowhere, you’ve got a basement door with three locks on it, and you’ve gotta believe I haven’t missed those locks, and you’re still tight-lipped. I’ve told you that I’ve been to Derbent an’ that I came from Atlana, but you’re still not letting yourself put the pieces together, are ya?”
Zakhar said nothing, took a slow, deep breath, and let it out quietly, calming his nerves. Thought about the Colt, going for it, watching the Glock trained on him, decided against it.
The intruder was still smiling that not-right smile of his. “What’ve ya got down there, Zakhar?” Zakhar, he says. He knows my name. “Or, maybe I should ask, who have ya got down there. Lemme guess, a sweet little piece o’ action? Small girl, blonde-haired and blue-eyed? Your people in Derbent were partial to those types. Izzat what you got, Zakhar? Hm? Izzat what you got on the last shipment?”
Trembling with barely controlled rage—rage at the insolence, the indignity, and his impotence in the moment—Zakhar said nothing, tried to remain still. His fingertips were still just touching the Colt’s grip.
The intruder laughed again. Zakhar’s blood was boiling. He was getting tired of being mocked in his own house by a trespasser, and someone who knew his secret. “Cut this, Jack,” said the intruder. “I know all about you. I know what you like doin’. I know you’re a part of somethin’ bigger, a family of sorts that started out this gig, but now you’re more like a customer. You help a little here an’ there with the shipping and the details, you still have a little bit o’ stock in your family’s old shipping business. Northeast Siberian Shippin’, right?”
Steady now. Steady. “I’m still not sure I follow you, my friend.”
That smile never wavered. “Well, let’s see if you can follow me around the world,” he said. “Seven months ago I’m in Atlanta, ran into a little bit o’ trouble with some Russians. A group of vory that fractioned off of the main group of vory v zakone, right here in the Motherland, and who started workin’ for some groups of human traffickers. One of their clients was a group of child pornographers called the Rainbow Room. The vory were at first only interested in the usual stuff—forced prostitution, maybe moving the girls across borders, through shipping containers. But they still used some old business ties over here in the Motherland; financing, moving some money into some trustworthy family members over here, family members who were holding on to it, like a retirement plan for the whole fucked up family.
“I got into a tussle with some of your pals—that’s how I got so pretty,” he added, turning his face over and stepping a bit more into the firelight. Zakhar could see the grotesque scar running the length of his face, like a canyon that someone had tried to fill in, and failed. “I dipped outta the A-T-L with the sirens still screamin’ for me. I found a doctor who did passable work on sewing me up, an’ then I got to looking. The guy that did this to me, his name was Dmitry. I believe ya know ’im?”
Zakhar tensed. He shook his head. “I’m afraid not.”
The gunman tilted his head to one side curiously, in a kind of look that said, How long are we going to do this? He continued with his story. “Before he died—if you can call it dying—Dmitry told me that he had family in Derbent. Now, I promised this son of a bitch that I’d kill his entire family. It was the least I could do after all he put me through. An’ I like to keep my promises. Call me old-fashioned.” He snorted a laugh. “I read all the follow-ups in the news concerning the story—you probably remember it? A bunch o’ human traffickers an’ child pornographers operating in and around Atlanta? They finally pinned a last name on ol’ Dmitry. Him, his brother Mikhael and their sister Olga were part of the Ankundinov family. Well now, as you can imagine I was happier’n a pig in shit when I found this out, because this narrowed my search down considerably.
“But first, I had to get outta the country. This wasn’t easy, ya know? I mean, every cop and his dog knew that I was in Atlanta, and they for some reason associated me with the Rainbow Room, and so I became a prime suspect. I’m still on Interpol’s list, last I checked their website. I never became very famous, because I was just one of a dozen others that eluded police agencies around the world durin’ this operation.” Bragging, Zakhar thought. He’s actually taking the time to brag. As much as it angered him, it might also be his salvation. Keep talking. Just keep talking. “Feds cracked down on anybody who knew me. Lotta colleagues o’ mine ain’t too happy with me.” He sighed. “In any case, after I got sewed up, I hopped from one ride to the next until I got into Canada. Found an old pal that owed me a favor, got a couple fake IDs, and finally, I made it here, to the Motherland.
“In a way, it was like…comin’ home, almost. I’m no Russian, but I have a certain, ah, aptitude, an ability to integrate easily into various socio-economic classes. I’m also good at pickin’ up on the vibe of a city. Ya know, I tend to read the people well
. I also take an interest in the customs an’ behaviors of my host city—it’s important in my line o’ work—so I bought a few language CDs, learned how to say ‘where’s the shitter’ and ‘fuck you’ in Russian—you know, the important stuff—an’ then started to check the listings on the Internet. Such a handy tool, the Internet.
“Long story short—I know, I know, too late, right?—I found a few more members of the Ankundinov family, followed a few for the first couple o’ months, figured out which ones hung out in the skeevy part o’ Derbent, and then offered my services. I’m a thief, specializing in boosting cars, and people always need cars, especially vory, am I right? Am I right, Zakhar?” Zakhar didn’t know what else to do but nod, so he did. “So, I engendered myself to a few of them, learned a bit about jackin’ local cars—you fuckin’ Europeans and your reversed ignition switches,” he chuckled. “And then I made myself the go-to guy for disposable cars.”
Zakhar’s eyes wandered about the room, searching for some way out, any way. The front door was five steps away, but it was locked. He’d locked it as soon as he returned from gathering the wood. There wouldn’t be enough room or time to lay down a few suppressing shots and dive for the door.
“That’s where I found out about the Ankundinov family’s connections to the Northeast Siberian Shipping Company. Lots o’ boats moving in and out of port, and all year round. The company was initially founded and run by an Anatoly Ogorodnikov—your grandfather. More an’ more shares have been sold down through the decades, leaving you with very little stake in it, but stake in it you still have, at least enough so that you get a few benefits.”
Zakhar shook his head. “I have nothing more to do with Northeast Siberian Shipping. Nothing besides a little bookkeeping.”
The smile never wavered, and neither did his knowing look. “Ya know, it’s an interesting fact: every year about nine million shippin’ containers enter U.S. ports, and about as many leave. Only about five percent of those are inspected before they are unloaded, even after 9/11 and all the fears of smuggled uranium started up. But it’s easier to detect enriched uranium hidden inside a container—a good Geiger counter can do that—but finding small children stuffed inside them…” He let the sentence drop.
“I’ve never hurt any children—”
“Liar liar, pants on fire.”
“I swear to you, I’ve never—”
The gunman put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh. I’m not here for the child, Comrade Ogorodnikov.” A moment of indulged relief, which helped to calm him, gave him hope. His fingertips were still on the gun’s grip. “I don’t care about any o’ the people you’ve hurt, or the children you choose to diddle. Honestly, that’s none o’ my beeswax.” He sniffed. “But I made a promise to Dmitry Ankundinov. I told him I’d kill his daughters. Only, they weren’t in Derbent like he said. They’ve moved somewhere else, with some other family. I learned this after a very considerable, and, uh…bloody interrogation.”
“It was you?” Zakhar still couldn’t believe it. He had received warnings, from his people in Moscow and his relatives in Chelyabinsk. They’d told him about a revenge killing, something they believed was associated with “bad blood” between their families and some other foreign families. It’s not, though. It’s just him. “You burned them?”
The gunman elected not to answer this directly. “It seems the Ankundinovs in Derbent heard about Dmitry’s downfall in the States, and they had a hunch to hide much of his close family—mainly from Interpol and other agencies, not from me. Still, the results are the same. They’re gone. All I wanna know is, where did the vory move his family?”
“You…want to kill his daughters?” he said, astonished.
“Don’t sound so appalled. What the fuck do you care? You’ve got someone’s son or daughter locked up in your goddam basement. Now, I can kill you where you stand, an’ this’ll be the last time you ever visit this lodge. Or, you could give me Dmitry’s daughters, an’ you get to stay here with whomever you’ve got locked up down below.” He shrugged. “Whattaya say, comrade? A child for a child?”
Was it really that simple? Just give over Dmitry Ankundinov’s family and that would be the end of it? Zakhar wasn’t truly conflicted on the decision—after all, he didn’t know Dmitry at all, and had only ever met the Ankundinovs during a few shareholder meetings here and there throughout the years—but would giving the family up really save him now? “What if I told you that I don’t know where they are—”
“Then I’d say you’re about as useless as an asshole on my face,” he said matter-of-factly, raising the gun.
Zakhar held up his left hand, still keeping his right hand close to his Colt, inching more over the grip. Has he noticed yet? he wondered. “Wait, hold on! Please! Prastite! I’m…I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I don’t know where they are, but I can tell you about the others!”
“What others?” There was a trick of the light in that moment. Something from the fire, deepening shadows that carved hard lines in the gunman’s face.
“Th-the others…” he said, beginning to stutter. “They m-might know where to find the rest of Ankundinov’s family. They’re the ones…the ones that the vory worked with first, when the vory first came to my family with the business proposition. That’s how my father always told it—”
“All right, shut up. I’m going to ask again, and slowly. Who—are—the—others? Names. I function on names.”
“N-ni znaju…that is, I don’t know their names—”
“Then how does this help me—”
“—b-because I kn-know their faction! Eh, how you say, their affiliation?”
“What, like a club or group name? A gang?”
“Da, da,” he said hurriedly. “A gang.”
“What’s the name?”
Zakhar swallowed once more. “At-ta Biral.”
The gunman reached into his left pocket, but never took his gun or his eyes off of Zakhar. He produced an iPhone, one that looked familiar to Zakhar. It took a second for him to realize it was his. “What’s your code for gettin’ into this thing?”
“Eh…eh…one-four-four-two.”
The gunman punched it in, then tapped a few keys on the touch-screen. “What was that word? Atta…?”
“At-ta Biral.”
“Spell it.” And so Zakhar did. The gunman punched in those letters. Zakhar’s right hand was now just about fully wrapped around the grip. He was ready to pull the Colt when the intruder looked up at him. “Eight cats? It says here at-ta biral translates in one o’ the Bangladeshi dialects as ‘eight cats’. You pullin’ my leg, Zak?” He gave Zakhar an austere look, glanced down at his gun, clearly saw his hand on the gun, but said nothing.
Unable to admit to raping children, it seemed Zakhar also could not acknowledge going for his gun, even when he was caught red-handed. “N-no. They are, eh, they are the At-ta Biral, the ‘Eight Cats’ of Bangladesh.”
“Bangladesh, huh?” He looked back at the iPhone’s screen, then lowered it and tossed it onto the couch. “You don’t wanna go for that gun, big fella.” Zakhar froze, becoming the very quintessence of a mannequin. “Tell me about these Bangladeshi boys. The Eight Cats, ya say? What are they, human traffickers like yourselves? Heroin? Prostitution? A bit o’ all three, be my guess. That’s how it works, right? Steal them, get them doped up, turn them out on the streets, and keep shuffling them around, place to place, an’ before long they don’t even know where they are, where they came from, or what their names are?” He jerked his head towards the hallway. “Is that where ya got your new stock? That how the Eight Cats keep ya satisfied? They send you a new toy every so often to appease you? You know what, don’t answer that, just take your goddam hand off that gun. Slowly, like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.”
For a moment, Zakhar didn’t believe he had the strength to just remove it. The gun seemed clamped to his hand, and his hand to it. It was his lifeline, his last chance out of this. He couldn’t…he wouldn’t…
But he did. Slowly, and like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.
“Turn around,” the gunman said. Zakhar obeyed as though in a dream. And could it be a dream? Could it? He’d always assumed that if he was found out, it would be police and sirens and the media snapping pictures of him. Not this. Never this. What was this? “Kneel.” Zakhar obeyed, as a robot might do, the commands registering with a programming deeply embedded while everything else—the firewalls keeping others out, the stubborn administrator guarding all the entrances—was rebooted. “Put your hands behind your head.” Zakhar obeyed. “Cross your feet.” Zakhar obeyed.
For a few moments, the lodge was engulfed in silence. It seemed the wind had even died down a bit. The radio had gone all staticky, and mostly silent. Zakhar listened as, behind him, the gunman just hummed to himself. He caught a few words being sung. “This tainted love you’ve given…I’ve given all a boy could give you…” He hummed a few more bars and moved around behind Zakhar. Perhaps checking windows? “Song’s been stuck in my fucking head all day. Like it’s on a loop. Don’t you hate that, getting a song stuck in your head?”
Zakhar said nothing. What was the right answer? Was there a right answer? So much was racing through his mind in that moment. The signs he’d ignored. His own elongated footprints in the snow leading up to his cabin—He followed in my footsteps. But when had the man come inside? How long had he been stalking Zakhar? Had he waited for him to put down the rifle? How much had been calculated?
He heard the gunman approaching from behind, slowly, slowly. Then, all at once, the Colt was snatched from Zakhar’s holster and the gunman took a step back. “Stand up.” Zakhar obeyed. At least, he tried. His legs had turned to water.