By prearrangement, six of the bear-guards closed ranks about the group.
At a gesture, Max unlocked the door. “After you, my dear Ambassador,” Chortenko said.
Surplus took a deep breath, and, when he exhaled, seemed to deflate. His shoulders slumped. His eyes dimmed and his gaze fell to the floor. All the fight had gone out of him.
With a shudder, he passed through the door.
…10…
Everywhere he went, Arkady was joyfully received. Women kissed his cheek and men hugged him fervently. Always he was urged to stay for a glass of tea or a shot of vodka. No one ever said aloud that an orgy might be in the offing, but the prospect was inevitably in the air.
Arkady would have liked to linger, but his holy mission would not allow that. He had to deliver rasputin to everyone on Koschei’s endless list-to noblemen, army officers, and heads of government agencies, to firefighters and police officers, to doxies and courtesans who snatched the vials from his hand, to hard men with prison tattoos on their fingers who slipped the drug into their pockets without a glance and soft men who received it with wondering eyes, to stock speculators and shopkeepers and dealers in fiery spirits, to priests and pharmacists and genetic surgeons, to college professors and unkempt poets, to night watchmen and munitions manufacturers and private security guards, to torch singers and dream-brewers and longshoremen, to parliamentarians in the Duma and bohemians in the Arbat and grim lords of biology in their cloneries just beyond the slums and brothels of Zamoskvorechye. Rumor of his sacred cargo had spread through Moscow like wildfire, so that to Arkady all the city was a sea of smiles and outstretched hands. His rented carriage sped from Kitai-Gorod to the slums of Gorky Park and as far out of town as the birch forests of Tsaritsyno. Everywhere, he dispensed his drugs like a fairy-tale prince scattering rubies, and was received with thinly disguised greed.
He felt like Grandfather Frost distributing presents to the children on New Year’s Eve.
It was exhausting work, but whenever he felt his energies flag, Arkady would open his walrus-hide satchel and plunge his face within, inhaling deeply of the air above the vials. Those microscopic fractions of the drug that had managed to slip past the wax seals would flow into his lungs and blood and brain and muscles, filling him with the strength and benevolence his mission required. It was nothing like the effects of a full dosage, of course, but it was sufficient to keep him going.
Periodically he returned to the New Metropol to refill his bag. Already he had given away far more of the drug than Koschei could possibly have brought with him to Moscow. Yet, like the miracle of the loaves and fishes, the more he gave, the more remained. It was a mystery as inexplicable and astonishing as the fact that God in His perfection should nevertheless love His flawed and sinful human children.
Or so it seemed. The mystery was solved when, coming back yet again to the New Metropol, Arkady saw two dead souls with albino skin and colorless rags for clothing leaving his suite. Their faces were lifeless, their bodies so thin he could not tell if they were male or female, and when they passed by him, Arkady caught a strong whiff of excrement. He entered the room and saw Koschei, Chernobog, and Svarozic prying open a newly delivered crate. Svarozic took the satchel from him and began methodically filling it with vials, straight from the crate, smiling beatifically all the while.
Arkady’s back ached just looking at the bag. All his good mood fled.
“This is too much!” he scolded. “There is enough here to drug every man, woman, and child in Moscow ten times over. Surely there is no need for it all to be distributed today.” He could not help thinking of all the beautiful young women in the city who were at this very moment giving themselves freely to everyone but him. Earlier that evening, he had turned down Yevgeny’s offer to help in the rasputin’s distribution, though it would have cut his time in half, because the task had been entrusted to him alone. Now he regretted that bitterly. “We should call it quits and start over again tomorrow.”
“It must be done today,” Koschei said, the God-light glowing in his eyes. His voice was low and thunderous, and when he spoke electricity seemed to crackle in the air about his head and beard. “Tomorrow will be too late.”
“What do you mean, too late?”
“Our labors are at long last come to fruition, praise God and all the Cherubim! For on this very day we will bring about the Eschaton and history will come to an end.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“No one can know what it means until it happens. We can only accept that it will.”
“I still don’t-”
“The Eschaton,” Chernobog said, “is the transcendent, uncreated, and spiritual apotheosis of humankind, the unending instant when the finger of God touches the Earth and all the immanent and phenomenal world is swallowed up in such wild glories as are experienced in each and every instant by the saints in Heaven.”
“But what are you talking about? What will it look like?” “You will know it when it comes,” Koschei said solemnly. “Yes,” Chernobog said, “and it will come soon.”
Beaming, Svarozic put his hands together in prayer.
Then, in a flurry of activity, the stranniks placed the satchel in Arkady’s hands, slapped him on the back, and ushered him out the door. He found himself alone in the hallway, blinking. He hadn’t understood a word of what had just been said to him. But it sounded very spiritual. In some way, it involved God. So whatever or whoever the Eschaton was, it must surely be a good thing? Of course it must.
He put his head inside the satchel, inhaled deeply, and returned to his work with renewed determination.
The tunnel stretched more than a kilometer beyond the Kremlin’s walls. Built with the eerie precision characteristic of the ancients, it curved almost imperceptibly, so that more of the corridor was continually appearing before them and monotonously disappearing behind. Luminous lichen covered the ceiling and walls, filling the tunnel with gentle light. Surplus led, followed by Zoesophia and then Chortenko with his dwarf savants, Max and Igorek, striding lockstep at his heels. The six bear-guards came lumbering after them.
“This is a bit of a walk,” Chortenko said. “But a pleasant one, yes?” Not that he believed for an instant that his unwitting captives found it any such thing. But he was fascinated by what untruths people could be made to agree to, rather than acknowledge an unbearable truth.
Stiffly, Zoesophia said, “You must excuse me, if I am not in the mood for idle chitchat. I have suffered a serious blow today.”
Surplus said nothing.
No one knew for what purpose the tunnel had originally been dug, for such things were never written down. But periodically the company passed a doorway that had been filled in with masonry or else secured by metal plates and locks that had long ago rusted solid. So that purpose, whatever it had been, was no more.
“Walking is such good exercise. I know you will think me a health faddist for saying so, but I try to put in at least an hour per day.” Chortenko removed his blue-glass spectacles. He could read Zoesophia’s face like a book. When he had first joined Muscovy Intelligence as a junior officer, he had had his eyes surgically removed and the hemispherical insectoid organs he now possessed grown in their place. That people found them intimidating had been pleasant for a homely youth of pudgy build. But their true merit was that they saw deep into the infrared, and so he could follow the patterns of blood flow in people’s faces.
Zoesophia, he could see, was lost in dark thoughts, dominated by worry and more than a touch of tristesse. But no fear. So she suspected nothing. Surplus was harder to make out, since his face was covered with fur. But his body language said it all. He plodded along listlessly, walking stick tucked under an arm, paws clasped behind his back. He stared fixedly at the ground before his feet. He was the very picture of one who had accepted the inevitability of pain and death, and was now overcome with despair.
Or so Chortenko would have assumed, were he the sort to make assumptio
ns. He was not. They were coming up on a trap he had prepared years ago, which had caught many a would-be fugitive. It was a door which had been left unlocked and just a little bit ajar. Anybody harboring the least spark of hope that he might escape would seize upon the opportunity and dash through it. Only to find himself in a cul-de-sac no larger than a closet.
Surplus gave the door a dispirited glance and continued past it.
So the sad creature was already as good as broken. Well, Chortenko thought, it was a pity, but all his research with the hounds had been for nothing. He would not have much fun with this one.
Zoesophia, however… Chortenko half-closed his eyes, imagining what might be done with a young woman of delicate sensibilities and a cloistered upbringing who blistered at the slightest touch of a man’s finger. Yes, there were possibilities there. Great possibilities. He would have to be careful to take it slowly.
He would have to make sure she lasted a long, long time.
Finally, the tunnel brought them to the kennels of Chortenko’s basement.
The dogs leaped and bayed furiously when Chortenko appeared, making the cages rattle as they slammed their bodies against the sides over and over again.
Zoesophia looked startled and flinched away from the dogs’ sudden violence. But Surplus only hunched his shoulders and stuck his paws in his pockets.
“You are dismissed,” Chortenko told the bear-guards. They saluted and turned back into the corridor, carefully locking the door behind themselves.
“Sir!” Five agents of the secret police stood in a line at the far end of the room. All wore drab civilian garb, and all, save for one, were ordinary-looking men. The speaker was simultaneously the tallest and thinnest man present. His face was so fleshless as to be almost a skull. “We await your orders.”
“So,” Surplus said in a dead voice. “It has come to this.”
“Come to what?” Zoesophia demanded. “Who are these men? Why are we in this filthy place, surrounded by wild dogs?”
Chortenko did not immediately answer. He had tucked his spectacles in an inner jacket pocket and was relishing the way the blood drained from her face. Behind his back, he held up two fingers.
“There are so many puzzling questions about the nature of the Byzantine mission,” he said in a voice that would have been reassuring to the lady were not two of his men pulling on cloth gloves as they advanced upon her. “I intend to have them answered.”
“Then ask!” Zoesophia cried, even as she was seized.
“Oh, there’s no rush, my dear. We have all the time in the world.” Chortenko turned to his men: “Throw her in an empty kennel. Not too roughly, please. I want her in pristine condition for what is to come.”
There were two unoccupied kennels. One of the secret police opened the nearest, and the two who held Zoesophia tightly forced her backward toward it. She struggled most fetchingly.
With disdainful ease, the men flung Zoesophia onto her back on the floor of the cage. Then they slammed and locked the door. She gathered herself up in a corner and crouched there, trying not to whimper in fear.
It was all most satisfying.
But, enjoyable as this was, there were more important matters to attend to. Chortenko had not expected the underlords, who would share only the broadest outlines of their plans with him, to be prepared to act until spring at the earliest. A hundred preparations would have to be altered. All the timetables he had set in place would have to be moved up.
“Wettig,” Chortenko said, not taking his eyes from his new captive.
“Sir,” said the tall and cadaverous agent.
“I have something to say to you privately.” Wettig bent low, his ear all but touching his superior’s lips, and Chortenko murmured,“Go to Baron Lukoil-Gazprom’s room. He is currently at the Kremlin for a meeting of the Committee for the Suppression of Dissent. When he returns, kill him.”
Wettig straightened, nodded, left.
Filled with the satisfaction that comes only when one has done one’s work well and sees everything falling neatly into place, Chortenko turned back to his confederates with a slight smile. Then he paused and looked around the room, feeling vaguely that something was missing.
With a touch of bewilderment, he said, “Where is the ambassador?”
Surplus sauntered idly through Red Square.
It was an astonishing space. One entered the square through the Resurrection Gates and so came upon it suddenly: To the right loomed the Kremlin. To the left was the building that locals for reasons nobody could explain called “Goom,” its facade as elaborate as a wedding cake; it had been originally built to house shops and now, after many changes of fortune, was converted to prestigious apartments for the wealthy and connected. Straight ahead was St. Basil’s Cathedral, with its throng of domes painted in bright candy-box colors. Nowhere was there a tree to be seen, or anything that had not been built by human hands. The granite-block-paved square (a rectangle, really, with the long axis running from the gates to the church) rose slightly and then sank down again before St. Basil’s, as if gracefully genuflecting. All these factors put together created an exhilarating effect such that wherever one stood, one felt as if he were standing on the very top and center of the world.
Surplus tested this observation by walking diagonally across the square, slowly twirling the walking stick which, astonishingly, Chortenko had not removed from his possession when he was in the man’s custody. (It was, he supposed, a tribute to his own acting ability, but one which he resolved not to let go to his head.) And, indeed, he found that wherever he stood the sensation was the same. So long as he was in Red Square, he felt himself in the exact center of, if not the universe, then all of the universe that mattered.
It explained so much about Russian history.
Surplus had not come here to sightsee, however, but to compose his thoughts. Already, the heady exhilaration of a successful escape was threatening to give way to the dread and paranoia of the fugitive. Chortenko would assuredly be scouring the city for him at this very instant. Therefore, Surplus had come to the one place it would never occur to the man to look-to the single most open and public space in all of Moscow.
He felt like a bit of a cad for leaving Zoesophia behind. But she had clearly been working hard to convince Chortenko of her helplessness. And if there was one thing Surplus had learned over the years, it was never to step on another professional’s lines. She had a plan, and he could only assume that his absence would, by flustering their mutual foes, help her put it into action. He had wished her luck, slipped unseen up the stairs backwards and on tiptoes (which was an easier stunt than most people realized) while his captives were distracted by Zoesophia’s admittedly fetching struggles, and put her out of his mind.
In the meantime, what was he to do? It was elementary that he could not, under any circumstances, return to the embassy. Nor, given the ubiquity of the secret police, would any ordinary hiding place do. With his distinctive appearance, he could not rent a hotel room in even the seediest neighborhood under an assumed name with any confidence of anonymity. If only he knew where Darger was! He had no doubt that his partner had found a bolt-hole of superior obscurity.
Pointless to dwell on that now, however. He had to look for a more accessible avenue of evasion, and so…
And so his eyes lit up when he saw the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma striding determinedly across Red Square, followed by a ginger-haired young man bearing packages. Tucking his walking stick under one arm, he intersected the pair’s path and bowed deeply to the baronessa. “Dear lady,” he said. “How pleasant to see you.”
“Monsieur Ambassador de Plus Precieux. Quelle surprise! I have caught you away from your duties-and all those beautiful young ladies of yours.”
“They are hardly mine, in any sense, and as to beauty… Well, when I first came to Russia, I was warned that I was bringing coals to Newcastle, and here before me is the living proof of the truth of those words.”
The baronessa smi
led in a way that indicated she appreciated a man who understood the art of flirtation. “Have you met my cousin, Yevgeny Tupelov-Uralmash?”
“A pleasure, sir,” Yevgeny said, with a friendly flash of teeth and a firm handshake.
Surplus responded in kind. “You have been shopping, I see,” he observed, offering his arm to the baronessa. She took it and they strolled onward, in the direction of Goom. “I trust I’m not keeping you from anything.”
“Well, I was making a few last-minute preparations for a little get-together at my pied-a-terre.” She nodded toward Yevgeny’s overladen arms. “A few bottles of wine, some caviar, those crackers you can only get direct from that bakery in Chistye Prudy…Trifles, really, but for some things one doesn’t want to rely on a servant’s judgment. Not when close friends are involved.”
“It sounds delightful. Is this a girls-only affair, or might I dare hope to accompany you there?”
The baronessa looked amused.“It would be rather a dull event without men, to my way of thinking.” Then, thoughtfully,“It’s meant to be strictly invitational, and I’ll catch hell from my social secretary if I bring along an unannounced date. Still…You are something of a social catch. And one of my male guests has indicated that he’s unlikely to be able to attend…”
“I still have hopes,” Yevgeny said.
“Yes, we all know what you hope, dear boy. Oh, don’t sulk! If he shows up, you’ll just have more of his attention to yourself.” She turned back to Surplus. “So-yes, I believe you’ll make quite an adequate substitution. Anyway, I’ve been curious to learn if it’s true what my female friends say about you.”
“You astonish me madam. Whatever can the ladies possibly find to say about a simple civil servant such as myself?”
“Nothing but good things, I assure you, Ambassador.” “Please. Call me Surplus. Will the baron be in attendance?”
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