by Pavel Kornev
"Bugger, boy! How old are you?"
"Twenty-two."
"That's exactly right!" the albino pointed his index finger at me. He took a sip of the slivovitz, burped and continued: "You're twenty-two years old, and you're still alive. Not everyone can boast of such things. You know how many die before coming of age, falling under a steam tram, drowning or signing up idiotically for the colonial forces? Or just of hunger, or freezing to death, at the end of the day! Their name is legion. So don't feel bad for yourself. You’ve had your heart cut out..."
"Twice..."
The Beast nodded.
"You’ve had your heart cut out twice, and you're still alive! And now you should be afraid of death? You made a deal with a succubus and know exactly what awaits you in the kingdom of the afterlife! An eternity of pain. Bugger! A whole eternity! Leo, you're truly immortal!"
"I'm consoled..."
"But at that, no one will put a paw on your soul while you're alive."
I winced in annoyance.
"I'm more worried about keeping my bodily shell going."
"So, say to hell with it all and run."
"I can't."
The Beast took a kitchen knife he had tucked in his belt and used it to pick between his uneven teeth, cleaning a piece of sausage skin he had stuck in there.
"Do you like feeling like the Empress's chained dog?" he asked with mockery.
"That isn't the issue."
"It is precisely the issue," the albino assured me. "You think they underestimate you. You think that if you complete the mission, you'll be let inside to warm up by the fire. You think they’ll give you a little bowl of food and water and lay you out a warm little bed."
"What are you talking about?!"
"What you’re thinking! And you're right. They really will let you into the house, pat you on the head and put you to bed. But you aren't gonna wake back up. Never! A gang of hooligans are wanton imps in comparison with your kin!"
"The Princess is strange," I agreed. "I fear the essence of a fallen one is dissolved in her blood and one day it might wake up."
The albino took out a cigar and lit it, then looked at me sidelong and snorted.
"I don't even know, Leo. How normal it is to discuss how strange your cousin is with your own imaginary friend?"
"Get bent!" I cursed, though it was without any ill will.
The Beast just started clucking in laughter.
"Chin up! You're the luckiest bloke I've ever met!" he declared, shaking his head. "You’re a schizophrenic with split personality, who was smart enough to kick his Mr. Hyde into an imaginary body. Keeps your hands clean!"
"That isn't so!"
"It is!" the Beast barked, and his eyes started glowing somewhat brighter than the cherry of the cigar squeezed between his teeth. "Have the courage to admit that at least to yourself!"
"Make yourself scarce!" I snarled.
The Beast laughed hard, but I was in no mind to let him have the last word.
"By the way, why couldn’t that Irishman in the basement hear you?"
"Sometimes, boy, a man simply speaks with himself."
I didn't get into a senseless conflict with the albino and took out my tin of sugar drops, popping one into my mouth. I rolled it between my tongue and the roof of my mouth, sighed and spit it into the grass. I didn't want sweets.
That was not for me. The Beast instantly nabbed the tin, stuck all the sugar drops into his wide maw at once and crunched them up like candied nuts.
"My advice to you, Leo," he said vaguely, "is to start doing what you do best."
"And just what is that?"
"Fear, boy! Bugger! Naturally, fear!"
I didn't give any answer, and the Beast wasn't counting on one. With a powerful throw, he sent the empty bottle deep into the night and walked to the tower on the top of the hill. I followed him curiously with my gaze, but it was offensively banal. The albino had simply decided to piss on one of the legs of the iron tower.
Lightning flashed over my head once again, and an arc of electricity sparked up between the tower and dark figure.
"Bugger, that shook me!" I heard a moment later. "Bugger, now that's a shock! A-ha-ha!"
I spat under my feet and returned to the night-enshrouded city. Now, I wanted to just sit in silence.
4
THE DAWN CAUGHT ME on the way down Calvary. I was crossing the bridge over the gully, in fact, when the sun, obscured by cloudy smoke, puffed up over the horizon and started shining impudently right into my eyes. There was a thick shadow in the city below and, for some time, the morning sun and I played tag: I would slip away from its rays, and the aggressive yellow dwarf would go up higher and higher, not wanting to admit defeat.
Then I cheated and ran away from it into the underground.
At such an early hour, nothing in the city was really working yet, but Emperor Clement Square was renowned for its luxurious cafes and shops. It was quite simple to find an open bistro there. It served coffee and pastries at prices unaffordable to mere mortals.
After the restless night on Calvary, where I managed to doze off for just a few hours, I was tortured by yawning and my eyes were sagging. A mug of strong black coffee couldn't fully rectify the situation, but my head grew somewhat clearer. And also, surviving the day seemed more certain, so I was less afraid. I'd force my way through it.
Impressed by my tip, quite sizable even by local standards, the bartender didn't refuse his generous visitor a telephone call, and I made use of a phone sitting on the bar. First of all, I asked the operator to connect me with the residence of the Marquess Montague and ordered the parlor maid who picked up to invite the young lady to the telephone.
"Who shall I say is calling?" the servant inquired.
"Tell her its Lev," I said, giving my newer name.
For a few minutes, the line was dominated by alternating static and silence, then I heard a sonorous woman's voice, and even the bad quality of the line couldn't dull the alarm in it:
"Leo, is that you?! Leo, what is happening?"
"Uh, what is happening?" I was struck.
"Mary called yesterday and said the police were looking for you!"
"That's right," I confirmed, trying hard to hold the careless smile on my face. "I’ve already told you what it's about."
"O-o-oh!" Liliana said, drawing out the word. "Is it all bad?"
"Everything will be alright. Just spend a bit more time at your parents'. I'll call."
"Tell me where you are, and I'll come!"
"Lily..." I sighed. "I'm racing around town like the White Rabbit! There's so much I need to do, I'm late everywhere by a day or two. I'll call you this evening, alright?"
"Do you promise?"
"I promise. But you have to believe in me, alright?"
"I love you, Leo!"
"I love you too, Lily."
With a sigh of pity, I bid her farewell and called Ramon Miro's office. That conversation was somewhat more business-like and laconic.
"You get it?" I asked my former partner.
"Got it," he confirmed. "We'll meet in two days at my last place of employment. Can you get there?"
"I can."
I placed the receiver back on the hook, thanked the bartender and went outside, not forgetting to take the case sitting at my feet. I didn't leave the square and, in the light gait of a careless ambler, walked to the huge Benjamin Franklin. But I wasn't headed to the hotel, I was drawn by a police barricade nearby. On the reddish granite bridge nearby were black spots of soot and spilled machine grease. The fragments of windshield and blood, if there was any to begin with, were already gone.
Tapping the first piece of a gear I came across with the tip of my shoe, I stopped and looked around. I was looking for possible escape routes the anarchist could have used after throwing the bomb into the inspector general's carriage. As far as I could tell from the newspaper headline, the cops had taken too long to shoot at the runaway, and he managed to hide in a neighbor
ing alleyway. The few eye-witnesses all confirmed that the bomber rode away on a bicycle.
Looking over the scene of yesterday's crime didn't bring anything useful; I lowered my peaked cap onto my forehead and walked away. But then I saw a chubby old man in a gray cloak unlocking the door of a pastry shop with a fanciful inscription reading: "Imperial Blancmange." I followed him into the shop and thoughtfully looked at all the different sweets in the case.
I didn't want any sugar drops. I wanted chocolate, but there wasn't any here and, for obvious reasons, there couldn't be.
While I made my choice, the seller changed his cloak for a clean white robe and sighed bitterly:
"I didn't see anything! And I already told your colleagues yesterday!"
He clearly took me for a cop, and I didn't want to convince him of the opposite, just chuckled:
"My advice to you: never say that you didn't see anything. Sounds too suspicious."
After that, I asked him to weigh me out two hundred grams of cream toffee, paid up and left the pastry shop, leaving the seller finally caught off guard.
The toffee was not bad at all. Working my jaws measuredly, I began throwing one candy into my mouth after the other and suddenly realized what exactly I had been lacking. The sugar drops were too sophisticated and refined; I wanted to act more decisively than simply rolling a wad of melted sugar between my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
I was overtaken by a feverish animation. Invigorated by the caffeine, and all aflutter with the upcoming action, my brain forced my suprarenal gland to release a simply unbelievable amount of adrenaline into my blood, and that made me plainly finicky.
Devil! Had I really taken to the role of the future Empress’s chained dog?!
I didn't want to think so; I mentally cursed out the albino and pulled yet another candy from the paper bag. The viscous toffee allowed me, if not to fully overcome my anxiety, then to at least somewhat calm down. So, I went down into the underground now determined and put together.
I went to the port.
At one of the local flea markets, I acquired a pocket chronometer with a timer and a baby carriage with a top that folded back. After not too much negotiation, I bought them both for four and a quarter francs. The facile nature of the roguish salesman was easy to explain: despite its presentable appearance, the carriage had been run ragged, and its wheels not only gave a ghastly whine, but also jammed quite often.
And though the whine didn't have much importance, the latter circumstance was not at all to my liking. I had to buy some oil, rags and a file, then roll my new purchase down a deserted alleyway nearby and make the wheels more functional.
After wiping down the carriage and my hands with a rag, I pulled on my canvas gloves and headed for the embankment. I walked past Riverfort up the river, stood for a bit on a viewing platform near a parapet and got back on my way. The sidewalk there went down a slope and, when I let go of the carriage handle, bouncing and shaking on the uneven causeway, it rolled to the bridge all on its own.
I didn't stop it, just walked next to it. Only at the way off the street did I grab the handle and hold it, not letting it bounce off the road. It took exactly twelve seconds to go from the nearest street light to the bridge. I just needed to find out how long it took a self-propelled carriage to cross the bridge, and it was all in the bag.
Although I could no longer sense fears in others, I didn't need my illustrious talent to know how the driver would react when he got up on the high arc of the bridge and saw the stroller comingdown the road. There could be no doubt–he would slam on the brakes. But that wouldn’t stop him right away. Inertia would force it to continue moving, then I would enter the game, the Empress's chained dog...
Hrmph, may that white-haired freak blow up! I had taken a shine to this role!
I hid the carriage in some bushes not far from Riverfort and headed out to meet Ramon in the hopes that no squirrely neighborhood boys would find it in my brief absence. Even if they did–it was nothing too bad: the nearest flea market was just five minutes away on foot, and I could find a replacement and come back.
Of course, it was dangerous to hang around so near the scene of my crime, but, if everything blew up, the Princess would find a way to send the investigation in the right direction. The main thing was not leaving any iron-clad clues against me. If I failed, there was no reason to worry about a police investigation.
RAMON AND I agreed to meet not at the Newton-Markt, as it may have seemed from the conversation, but at the coalhouses where he had worked briefly as a guard right after being fired from the metropolitan police. The complex of squat fenced-off coalhouses was located in the midst of a soot-blackened wasteland in behind a boiler house, between a dye shop and some shacks scheduled for demolition.
That was exactly where I came out, carefully looking around. I didn't see any suspicious activity nearby, there were just lorries full of coal coming down the broken road to the main gates. So, throwing off the illusory suspicion, I walked to the warehouse where Ramon and I had once hidden an armored vehicle with weapons I had stolen from illustrious conspirators.
I was not mistaken–Ramon's self-propelled carriage, all covered in streaks of dried mud, was right there. Tito was sitting at the wheel watching the road and singing something quietly to himself drumming in time on the dashboard with his fingers. When I approached, he looked out the open door and pointed at the coalhouse.
"Uncle Ramon is inside!" the boy told me, holding a carbine in his hand that was nearly falling out of the cabin.
Crunching the large bits of coal, I walked to the cracked-open gates and glanced inside. In the middle of the pack house, there was a huge inactive steam truck and, in the far corner, there was a wide table. All the rest of the space was filled with heaps of wooden boxes, doubtlessly full of weapons.
Even a complete ignoramus could tell on first glance. And the Maxim machine gun laid out on the table spoke for itself. Ramon and his cousin, both without jackets and with their shirt sleeves rolled up, had just finished assembling it after wiping off the factory grease.
"Going to overthrow the government?" I joked and suddenly turned my attention to a familiar marking on one of the boxes. "Devil, Ramon! You promised!"
"What are you talking about?" the hulking man asked in surprise.
"The Steyr-Hans!" I pointed in accusation at the gun box. "You said you got rid of the pistols!"
"I lied," Ramon Miro admitted calmly, throwing an oily rag underfoot. "Understand me, Leo. There were too many pistols just to get rid of them like that. And don't worry, they won't turn up anywhere! All these weapons," he led his hands over the boxes, "we're bringing with us to the Caribbean."
"We?"
"My squadron."
"You decided to accept the offer?"
"I did. And, as you understand, titanium-slide pistols will come impossibly in handy there."
I nodded, agreeing. The Aztec wizards and voodoo priests could stop a normal weapon with their magic, but titanium served as a decent defense from the infernal attacks of malefics. Science is stronger than magic–that is true.
So, I didn't cause a fuss, just sighed and asked:
"And what's with the machine gun?"
"An opportunity presented itself, and I bought one. Now we're gonna test it," Ramon explained and asked: "Have you got my revolver?"
"Yes," I answered and pulled the Webley-Fosbery from my pocket, extending it to my friend. "Can you give me something in exchange?"
"Take your pick!"
I chose a Steyr-Han. At the same time, I set a belt holster on the table, a few clips and two boxes of rounds. For the first while, that would be enough.
"That'll be five hundred francs," Ramon announced. "And the seven thousand you promised for guard duty."
I pulled a check book from my inner jacket pocket and asked:
"Have you got a quill?"
The hulking man rolled his eyes.
"You’re gonna write a check, Leo? Are you s
erious?"
"You got the money from the last check no problem, right?"
Ramon Miro exhaled a silent curse, clapped over his pockets and extended an automatic pen with golden quill. I wrote out a check for seven and a half thousand francs, waved it in the air to dry the ink, then handed the paper to my former partner.
"Is everything alright?"
"Give me back the pen," Ramon demanded.
"What about the bomb?"
Instead of an answer, the hulking man placed a bulbous leather traveling bag on the table; I flicked the locks and discovered an iron box inside with an awkwardly welded handle and side lever.
"The case is magnetized, it'll stick dead to a police armored vehicle. I tested it myself. Explosion delay is five seconds. The detonator is electric, exactly as specified."
"Is the electric jar charged?" I clarified, removing the weighty machine infernale from the travelling bag.
"It's got a dynamo," Ramon explained. "But keep in mind, it takes some force to get the lever down. There's a good bit of TNT inside, so be careful."
I clarified just in case:
"How confident are you in the seller?"
Miro threw up his hands.
"As much as one can be with such types."
"Well, let's hope then..." I muttered and set the bomb in my own case. It just barely closed.
"By the way!" Ramon Miro suddenly snapped his fingers. "You're not the only Russian who needed explosives. Someone came to this seller a day before us. But he was interested in dynamite."
"Yeah, to hell with him," I waved it off. "Your man's clients are of no concern to me, I'm concerned with the quality of his goods."
"Take some grenades," the hulking man offered. "I have some white phosphorus ones. I ordered a shipment from your friend Dyak just in case..."
It was a tempting offer, but with a certain share of pity, I had to refuse it. Anarchists had never before made use of such grenades, and I was intending to imitate their modus operandi to a T. Not a single trace could lead back to me.
"No, I don't need anything else," I shook my head, taking the little case and heading for the exit. When I was already in the gateway, I turned back and asked: "No news on Berliger?"