The Scioneer

by Peter Bouvier

  Dahlia Ortega watched as the woman’s body slumped against her boyfriend’s and then she loped away with the rest of the gang across the Common.

  ***

  Cesar stepped out of the Reincarn8 Gentlemen’s Club with one of the barmaids in tow. He whispered something in her ear, slapped her backside and sent her back inside. Then he turned and walked straight over to Domino on the opposite side of the street.

  ‘What’s up Cesar? You want some business? Empire State?’

  ‘No chico, I’m cool. I was just wondering if you’ve seen Vidmar yet this evening?’

  ‘No way. Don’t expect to neither. The word’s already out. Vidmar is persona non grata round these parts. Seems he upset the big man today. There’s already a hundred K on his head.’

  ‘John Lennon’s ashes! The big man just points a finger, and one of you guys pulls the trigger...’

  ‘Not me, man. I only sell the shit. What I would give for that kind of money though. I’d be out of this mug’s game in a heartbeat.’

  ‘Good for you. You’re a smart kid, Dom. Stay safe.’ And he patted Domino on the shoulder with a massive hand and strode off into the night.

  ***

  In his thick fog of unconsciousness, Lek dreamt of a better life. He was in Paris, wandering through the cobbled back streets of Montmartre, holding hands with Crystal. He wore a cream linen suit and a boater and Crystal looked beautiful in a vintage red and white polka dot dress and huge sunglasses. They were smoking Gauloise cigarettes and laughing at the cherry blossom floating on the air. People were smiling at them as they walked by. In a heady romantic haze, Crystal suggested they stop at one of the cafes on the Seine and take in the ambience. An accordionist who looked just like Vidmar, even down to the ragged scar, drifted by their table and tipped his beret.

  ‘C’est Monsieur Vidmar,’ said Crystal.

  ‘Je ne savais pas que tu sais parler francais,’ murmured Lek.

  ‘Moi, non plus,’ laughed Crystal. At the table opposite, Delić was reading love poetry from a small black spiraled notebook. He pointed his pen directly at Lek’s face and gave a wink.

  The waiter arrived with their coffee and croissants. Lek noticed as he lowered the tray that he was missing a finger from his right hand. He tried to see the man’s face, but he was silhouetted against the morning sun, and Lek had to keep blinking to try and recognise him. ‘Ca sert a rien’, he told himself with a shrug.

  For no reason, Crystal suddenly slapped him around the face.

  ‘C’est pour quoi ca?!’ Lek exclaimed, but she only slapped him again and shouted something at him, holding her tiny coffee cup up to his nose…..

  Chapter 24

  Vidmar smelt the presence of Crystal’s car long before he could see it, but when it finally appeared in his line of vision on the corner of the Common, it seemed bright enough to light up the night sky, shining like a beacon in his bloodhound eyes. His senses came flooding back to him and in that moment he knew exactly what he needed to do - find Gorski; get the recipe book; don’t make the same mistakes as Delić. He unclipped his Bertruzzi from its holster and stealthily approached the Proto. When he was close enough to see that it was battered and bleeding biorg fluid, he panicked, assuming that somebody else had beaten him to the prize. Then he saw a woman in the front seat. On second glance, he realised that it was the woman: Purcell, wearing a pink wig and thank Ringo, she was slumped against a... younger, better looking version of Gorski; but Gorski nonetheless. The relief was palpable. He crept forward, circling around the other side of the car, all the time trying to piece together what must have happened to them. A crash? A gangland hit? Without thinking, he slipped the pistol back into the holster, and it was in that split second that he became suddenly aware of a huge presence standing next to him, breathing heavily and yet making no sound. Vidmar spun around and his face met the concrete fist of Cesar Pitres. The swinging uppercut lifted him clean off the ground, and Vidmar was dead before his body smashed into the back wheel arch of the Proto.

  ***

  In a burnt-out Credibus shelter on Trinity Road, Arid shivered in the warm evening air and wished he hadn’t let himself slip into addiction. His mother would be wondering where he was. Dinner would be waiting for him. He had an essay to write. His scratched a spot on the back of his neck and noticed for the first time the fine bristles of hyena-hair growing above the collar of his vest. ‘Were they there this morning?’ He pulled out his blade and touched the tip: what was he doing? He was not a boy, and not yet a man, unsure of himself and trying to find his way in the world. He only wanted to be part of the gang, to get high and laugh at nothing and everything. One thing he did know - he was no killer. As Arid came to his senses and stood up to leave, Osaze stepped into the bus shelter, glowing with pride. A tall sinewy man stood behind him. His dark skin was covered in a thin golden fuzz, which obscured the perma-tatts on his chest and arms. He wore golden earrings, eyebrow bars and a lip stud. Even the oversized muscles of his jawbone had been pierced and when he opened his mouth to speak, Arid saw that his sharp teeth were also gold-plated.

  ‘So, you have come to do your duty with your hyena brothers. Good. I like to meet all the new recruits before a rumble. Osaze has faith in you. I have faith in you. Tell me blood-brother, are you ready to fight?’

  Arid swallowed hard and lied, ‘I am, Yakuba’.

  ***

  Cesar took a moment to gather his thoughts. His heart was pounding: he had never killed a man before, but he told himself that desperate times called for desperate measures. He curled his hand around the lapels of Vidmar’s scarred suit and lifted him off the ground as though he weighed no more than a sack of potatoes. Cesar popped the boot and slung the body inside. ‘Family and friends’, he said to himself, under his breath, ‘Not many of the first lot left, I’d better look after the others.’ He tore his eyes away from the pulped bloody mess that had once been Vidmar’s face, closed the boot and stepped around to the passenger window. Lek was still out cold, but the sound of Vidmar smashing into the bodywork had woken Crystal, who was staring around, wild-eyed. She screamed again when she saw Cesar’s orange eyes watching her.

  ‘It’s ok, it’s ok. I’m a friend,’ he said, and Crystal realised who he was.

  ‘You’re…you must be Cesar? Lek’s told me a lot about you.’ And she offered a hand over the top of Lek’s unconscious body.

  ‘He said you were a beauty,’ said Cesar, with a half smile.

  ‘He said you were a beast,’ she replied, ‘and his best friend’.

  ‘Yes. I am. Both, I suppose. I wish I could stay and help you, but I’ve just... done something. Vidmar’s dead.’

  ‘How did you know where to find us?’

  ‘I’ve been keeping my eye on Lek all day, on and off, but I should probably make myself scarce now. You should too. You’ve got to get to the station. Get out of this place.’

  ‘I’ve got to wake him up first.’

  ‘Give him a whiff of this,’ Cesar said, handing over a tiny brown bottle from his pocket. ‘It’s Animal - amyl nitrite. It’ll perk him right up, chica. You should get some ice on that shiner too. It’s doing nothing for your image.’

  ‘Thank you. Really, thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome, beauty.’

  And with that, Cesar turned and padded off across the Common. Crystal watched him go. As she looked out of the smashed window, she realised there were other people out there in the darkness, and not just the odd stranger in the night, intent on walking the dog, or loved-up couples taking an evening stroll. There were groups of people loitering in the shadows. Gangs of young people. In a flash, it hit her - full moon. And only fifteen minutes to electricurfew.

  Chapter 25

  Self preservation. It was a concept that Lyubomir Pechev understood completely. He looked at the myriad lights across the city and thought about Lek Gorski. ‘Where are you Doctor?’ he asked aloud. ‘Trying to make your getaway, no doubt’.

  In the weeks
following his own attempted escape from the tyranny of Taloquan, Pechev was forced to learn how to play the piano again without the use of his middle finger. He sat for many hours in the company of his kidnapper, awkwardly stretching his right hand across chords which had once come so naturally to him. And while he struggled to consciously override his muscle memory, he fought to hold on to his memories of the past, of his time in Kalinovka, and of his identity. Burdened by the tide of new information his young brain was absorbing, he found in time that the mental images of his place of birth, his home, his parents, even the memory of his real name were proving harder to recall. By the time he was ten, these things had slipped from his grasp entirely and it seemed on the surface that he had accepted his fate and succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome, mistaking a lack of abuse from his captor as an act of kindness.

  In truth, a fire still burned within him, and Lyubomir Pechev refused to let it go out, such was his desire to escape. Though he lived a life of relative luxury, a life which many children in Russia could only have dreamed of in 1997, he dedicated his days and nights, locked in his room, to meticulously planning his next flight, dismissing schemes which would require too many leaps of faith. Fleeing from the house was one thing, surviving on the outside was another. In six years, he had never been off the estate grounds, but he placed enough faith in his own intelligence and instincts to believe he could stay alive on the streets of Moscow. Whenever he had the chance, he studied roadmaps, Metro-plans, and even read guides to the city. He also made a point of committing to memory every telephone conversation, every scrap of written information, name and number which Taloquan in his ignorance let slip while in Pechev’s company. He watched how ruthlessly Taloquan did business, listened to him hammering down the price he paid for Latvian and Lithuanian girls, and squeezing every cent from the men who bought them. Pechev soaked up his captor’s mannerisms and the language he used.

  On the sixth anniversary of his kidnapping, Taloquan presented Pechev with an antique chess set and over their first game, informed the boy that his true parents were dead, confirming that his mother had indeed died of hypothermia in a snow bank on the day he had been taken. As for his father, he had devoted the rest of his life to alcoholism following his wife’s death and his precious Aloysha’s abduction, until three years later when he was found floating in the Volga, twenty miles from his hometown. Pechev neither showed nor felt emotion, so far removed was he from his own past, but the glint of humour in Taloquan’s eyes as he imparted the news only served to steel his resolve.

  His plan was simple. He needed only to wait for the right circumstances. Like all criminals who had reached a certain level of success, Taloquan was paranoid and employed as few staff as possible through fear of being killed in his sleep by an unknown chambermaid, or hacked to death on the croquet lawn by a junior gardener. As it was, there were only three loyal employees who lived on site: the chef, the housekeeper, and a man named Boris who seemed to do everything else, from feeding the hunting dogs to slopping out the prostitutes’ cells. They knew Taloquan’s background and business, and were clearly paid enough to keep their mouths shut.

  On a hot afternoon in August, when both the chef and housekeeper were shopping in the city, Pechev decided he could wait no longer and seized the best opportunity he had been given in months. From his piano stool, he could see Boris chopping firewood near the stables. Taloquan was tapping away at his computer when Pechev began to purposely hit wrong chords in his interpretation of Schuman’s Trout Quintet. He feigned annoyance at the piano and stomped on the foot-pedals in a petulant manner. Taloquan eventually looked up from his work.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I think the pedals have become disconnected. The notes are dying off. Can’t you hear it?’ and again, Pechev hit a couple of disharmonious chords, knowing that his master knew nothing about the workings of his own musical instrument. He bent down and began hammering the pedals with his fist.

  ‘In the name of Allah,’ cried Taloquan, ‘Be careful boy! That thing is worth more to me than you are!’ and with a sigh of exasperation, he stepped away from his stinkwood desk and knelt down to examine the problem for himself.

  In a flash, Pechev picked up the bronze bust of Lenin from the bookshelves and brought it down with a sickening crack on the back of Taloquan’s head. When he checked for a pulse and found none, his own heart rate didn’t change. With precise movements, he ticked off the items he needed from the room and from about Taloquan’s person - wallet, cash-clip, keys, revolver. His own bag was in his cell, already packed with clothes and his all important birth certificate. Pechev took a moment to set a CD of ‘The Greatest Piano Concertos EVER’ playing on the stereo and left the office, remembering to lock the door behind him. He retrieved his bag, moved silently through the house and opened the front door, only to find Boris stamping the mud from his workman’s boots on the gravel of the driveway. He stared at Pechev with simple eyes, but the boy could take no chances: he drew the revolver from his pocket and shot Boris through the forehead. In for a penny, in for a pound.

  Pechev had resigned himself to the idea of surviving alone. Even if Taloquan had been lying and his parents were still alive, he had no means of finding them. Besides, he had just killed two men and for all he knew, he was a fugitive from the law. His plan was to make his way to Moscow and go to ground.

  He spent his first night of freedom sleeping in Taloquan’s stolen Mercedes, which he had managed to bump along the thirty miles between the estate and the suburbs of Moscow, peering over the steering wheel the whole way. In the morning, Pechev wiped off all the surfaces he had touched: the door handle, the steering wheel, the stereo, before handing the keys to a tramp begging on the corner of a street.

  Pechev caught his first ever subway train into the city centre of the Russian capital.

  For a week, he lived the life of a tourist, sleeping in the shared dormitory of a youth hostel near the Kremlin, where he managed to blend in with a touring college choir. In the daytime, there was business to attend to and many obstacles for a boy of his age to overcome in the process, but Pechev found that whenever his pre-pubescent body and reedy voice failed him, money talked loud. With a fifty rouble note, he managed to open a young-saver’s current account in the Zenit Bank using his faked birth certificate and a false address as identification. He was given a small ceramic piggy bank as a welcome gift, which he carried with him to the nearest internet café.

  He handed a single rouble to the pretty purple-haired assistant with a nose-ring, who in turn gave him a five minute lesson in logging on, navigating the web and even showed him how to open his own email account. In over six years, he had never once been allowed near Taloquan’s computer, but he found he understood in seconds. Pechev thanked the girl, and began surfing. He found the website he was looking for – Montserrat Financial Offshore Accounting. In 1995, Herat Taloquan had seen the potential of online banking when it was still in its infancy and actively sought out a bank which enabled him to launder his money across a number of dotcom companies from the comfort of his office. When the governments of the world finally scrambled to police this new wave of criminal activity, Herat was way ahead of the curve. So much the better, thought Pechev, as he pulled up the personal internet banking page on the screen. He closed his eyes and searched through all the information he had stored in his brain regarding Taloquan’s finances. His fingers flew across the keys like he was playing the Minute Waltz, as he called to mind every account number, sort code and password which he had ever consigned to memory while sitting at the piano in Taloquan’s office.

  Before his allotted hour was up, Lyubomir Pechev had managed to transfer forty-eight million dollars of Herat Taloquan’s offshore holdings into his own young saver’s account. He picked up his piggy bank and walked back to the youth hostel, treating himself to a Big Mac on the way.

  Four days later, when the funds had cleared, he paid cash for a small flat in Basmannyy, a depressed but not unsafe
area of the city. The estate agent who had initially thought she was being secretly filmed for a television show, had played along until Pechev innocently opened his backpack, pulled out a stack of crisp bills and asked her if she handled the money.

  Pechev was free: to all intents and purposes, an eleven year old orphan, trying to make his way in the world. He had no need for education, at least not in the academic sense. He was financially secure and apart from his bank account and utility bills, he lived off the net. Within a week, he had arranged for a telephone line to be fitted, and bought an American personal computer for ‘good price’. It was the age of the internet, and even in the backstreets of late 90’s Moscow, it was possible to pay for virtually anything online. He found the website of a top-end security company and had his cheap plywood door replaced with one made of reinforced steel, had closed-circuit cameras mounted around the flat and finally had bulletproof windows fitted. He knew full well he had paid over the odds for this state of the art security but this was to be more than his home. It was base camp and from here, he intended to climb to the top of the criminal world, and take back from it everything he felt was rightfully his.

  And so it was, that with a fortune in the bank and a Naudia voice distorter attached to his telephone handset, Lyubomir Pechev rebuilt Taloquan’s lost empire. Out of some kind of respect for those girls who had shared the basement cells in the mansion house, he moved his business away from sex-trafficking, preferring to plough his money into drugs. He had an inherent interest in science and medicine and it seemed like the logical move. He forged new contacts in Colombia and rekindled Taloquan’s old partnerships in Afghanistan, importing huge quantities of pure cocaine and heroin at St Petersburg and distributing it domestically and throughout Europe. He had enough sense to stay behind the scenes, choosing instead to permanently employ those people who over time had proved themselves to be loyal.