Vodka

by Boris Starling

  “Mom, I’m fine. That was great.”

  Lewis appeared in Alice’s vision, on his knees beside her. “I was over by the shoot-da-chute, I didn’t see anything. What happened?”

  “I fell. I’m fine.”

  “Let me check. Where did you hit your head?” He removed her hat and ran a hand over her head, probing through her hair for any damage. She reached up and guided his hand to a place on the back of her skull. “There.”

  His fingers moved like a pianist’s. “Just a boo-boo. You’ll have a bump and a headache.”

  “That’s called a hangover, Lewis.”

  “Don’t joke, Alice.” He felt again, to be sure. “You’re lucky. A hickey, nothing more.”

  “A hickey?” Harry said. “You’d better be worried if your wife’s got a hickey … I mean …” He trailed off into communal silence; memories of Alice and Lev were still too raw.

  “A hickey in New Orleans is a bump on the head,” Lewis said neutrally. “We call the other thing a passion mark.” He hopped to his feet, and Christina took his place in Alice’s face. “What the hell were you playing at, Alice? How could you be so irresponsible?”

  “Probably,” Alice giggled, “because I’m drunk.”

  “You’re damn right. It’s disgraceful.”

  “Christina”—Alice propped herself up on one elbow—“it was an accident. Josh isn’t hurt, and neither am I.”

  “You think I couldn’t care less about you? He’s not hurt by sheer chance; you’re not hurt because you’re so pickled. I don’t want you touching my son ever again, you hear me?”

  “I love your son as though he were mine.”

  “Then maybe you should have your own.”

  “Maybe you should shut the fuck up.”

  “Come on, Alice,” said Lewis. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Home? Why home?”

  “Don’t start this.”

  “Home, because that’s where a woman should be? Not me. I have a brain and I have balls and I use them both, and fuck you all.”

  “I think we should all go home,” said Bob. He was making damping motions with his hands, to calm things down. “Come on, Christina. Josh! Home!”

  Alice was looking at Lewis, and she saw the panic flash in his eyes as he realized.

  “Josh!” Bob shouted again, swiveling on the spot as he looked for his son.

  Josh was nowhere to be seen. Nor, for that matter, was Rodion.

  “He’ll be all right,” said Alice weakly.

  “Well, he’s clearly not, is he, you stupid bitch?” Christina snapped.

  “We can play the blame game afterward,” said Bob. “Wherever they’ve gone to, they can’t have gone far. Let’s split up. Christina and I will go over there—” He pointed north, up toward the Kremlin. “Harry, you go there—” West, in the direction of the river. “And Alice and Lewis, that way—” South, to the main body of the park. East was across the ice rink, and they could see that Josh and Rodion weren’t there. “If you see a policeman, tell him what’s happened. We’ll meet back here in fifteen minutes.”

  It was hard enough to stay balanced on Gorky Park’s ice-slippery paths when walking normally; panic and haste made it twice as difficult. Harry and Christina both fell over within a few strides of setting off, and Bob and Lewis looked in danger of following suit. Alice was the only one who seemed unaffected. As she ran, she wondered whether it was because she’d started walking like a Russian, carrying her weight above her belt.

  Through the trees, she could hear Christina’s keening, a mother crying for her child.

  Alice ran as though the hounds of hell were at her heels. Vodka and adrenaline had made her extraordinarily alert. When she scanned opening vistas of startled passersby and empty fairground rides, she felt as though her brain were capable of processing vast amounts of information in the blink of an eye. Lewis was finding it hard to keep up. She heard him yelp, and when she looked around he was emerging from a pile of blackened slush.

  They stopped, looked and ran; stopped, looked and ran; and nothing, no sign. There were too many people—perfect for a legless man to hide himself and a small boy. “Have you seen them?” she asked passersby breathlessly. “Have you seen them?” Shrugs, blank looks, commiserations; nothing helpful.

  Around another corner and there they were, more than a hundred yards ahead, glimpsed fleetingly through a space in the throng. It looked as though Josh was slung over Rodion’s shoulder. Alice cupped her hands to her mouth and hollered. “Rodya! Josh!”

  Rodion looked around and then turned away. She was about to shout again when she saw them disappear into the ground, and the sight stopped her dead. Into the ground?

  Later, Alice wouldn’t remember covering the space between where she’d been standing and where they’d vanished. Suddenly she found herself standing by a manhole cover, sitting slightly askew, improperly replaced, and she knew.

  Lewis was at her side. “What the—?”

  “Quick!” she barked. “Give me a two-kopeck piece!”

  Irk hadn’t enough men to mount a full-scale search of the sewers, so he was left with two options. Either he could hunt Rodya by himself, and he was not sure he was mentally or physically strong enough for that; or he could finally bite the bullet, go to Lev, take a dozen Mafiosi, and be grateful for their help.

  Like most things to which Russians refer as choices, it was nothing of the sort.

  Alice was waiting for them at the manhole. It took them twenty minutes to get there, and each of those seemed like a lifetime. If Josh … if something happened to him …

  Lewis had gone back to the rendezvous by the ice rink to collect the others. They stood and watched as Irk led his temporary allies down into the underworld. “You find him, you hear me?” Christina shouted. “You find him!” And then they were gone.

  The sewers were a labyrinth. Irk had to second-guess Rodion, or they would never catch him.

  Rodion had heard Alice shout, so he’d know the chase would be on. He wouldn’t risk killing Josh somewhere open, where he might be found. Instead he’d take him into the unknowable depths. On the other hand, he must have been desperate to snatch someone in broad daylight from a woman who knew him. Rodya had nothing left to lose now that his name was known and his cover blown. Irk thought briefly of Sveta and Galya, still blissfully ignorant that they’d borne and married a monster respectively. Then he thought of the times Rodya had offered to “help” with the case, and his heart hardened once more.

  Irk ran his flashlight down three tunnels before he found what he was looking for: tracks. They were intermittent and sometimes faint, but they were definitely there. Extended drag marks where the tips of Josh’s little boots had trailed; splayed marks from Rodya’s hands; knurled lines from the wheels of Rodya’s trolley.

  Irk led the way. In the larger pipes, the men could walk four abreast; smaller sewers forced them into a stooping single file, past electric pumps that maintained flows at least ankle-deep and thus concealed the tracks that were Josh’s only lifeline. Irk lost the trail, found it again, lost and found—he needed Theseus’ thread. When they came across a stream running red, Irk started; his first thought was that he was wading through blood, but the accompanying chemical smell reproached him for his silliness. The red flow was nothing more sinister than the efflux from a paintworks.

  Stalactites of grease congealed around the entrance to a pipe barrel; glowing lines of worms the size of grass snakes, luminous in the darkness. The phosphorescence in turn illuminated carp with tiny horns on their heads, strange mutations caused by chemical waste.

  Half an hour, an hour, perhaps two—Irk had no idea how long it had been, but suddenly there was a splashing in the tunnel up ahead. Jabbing his flashlight in that direction, Irk picked out a half-size man swinging from hand to hand, almost at the end of the beam’s range, and with him Josh, slumped over Rodion’s shoulder, held in position by the sling—it was impossible from this distance to tell whether he was
unconscious or dead. Sound carried a long way in the sewers, Irk thought, and then realized that it worked both ways: Rodya must have heard them coming.

  The chase was on.

  Scanning the mountain ridges, looking for a dust puff on the scree, some tiny inconsistency in the shape of the upper hillside, but seeing nothing but the flowers and blue skies and mountains; then the flicker of lightning above the rock walls, a thunderclap over the valley, and here came the attack: a lunar surface of sliding feet and razor-fine rock cutting shins and knees and hands and elbows, mujahidin running for firing positions, bullets whipping up little fountains of dirt all around, and you’d think how close that was, how you must write to your friends and tell them, but not your mom, of course, you didn’t want to worry her, but that’s the way it was when you lived next to death like that, you didn’t think about it anymore—never think, never think, the first to think died, keep moving if you wanted to stay alive, move and fire, move and fire, your trigger shiny with use, never look back, bullets slapping into the cliffs, you hoping that they were the ones that exploded on impact, because then they wouldn’t ricochet and get you on the rebound, when a bullet hit someone it was an unmistakable sound, you never forgot it, a wet slap and down went your mate right next to you, and the first time it happened you reacted like you were in a dream, but soon there was nothing left of you but your name, you’d become someone else, someone who wasn’t frightened of a corpse, someone who just wondered how the hell he was going to drag two hundred and twenty pounds of man and equipment down the rocks, especially in that heat.

  Rodion scampered ahead of the pursuers, a fox before the hounds. It was a hideously uneven contest, of course. There were many of them and only one of him, they had legs where he didn’t, they were armed where he wasn’t, and they weren’t being slowed down by having to carry a child. But he could move fast on those strong hands, and he used them well, keeping to the narrow tunnels wherever he could, doubling back on himself and leading them around in circles, second-guessing those detachments that boxed the long ways around to try and cut him off up ahead. No matter how many tunnels they covered, Rodion always had one more up his sleeve, and like a fish he was gone from the net again. He swung across gangways and rappled down waterfalls using ladders like ropes. Where streams joined each other in larger channels, he scooted across the current as fast as possible, ignoring the echoing shouts that bounced off the walls and the flashlights that danced with the effort of pursuit, sounds and shadows wild and distorted as light and shade churned together. When they were close, he could hear the urgency of their puffing breath.

  “Give it up, Rodya!” Irk shouted, but he knew he was wasting his time.

  Rodion knew he couldn’t run forever; there were simply too many people after him. Gradually his options began to narrow. Three times he almost set off down a tunnel before realizing there were men coming through it toward him. They were getting better organized, that was what was happening; rather than simply following him, they had spread out in a large circle and were slowly closing in.

  Nearer and nearer still, and Rodion was tiring with Josh’s weight, but he couldn’t let the child go. He darted into a side tunnel and realized too late it was a dead end. Then they were with him, and all he could do was push himself flat against the wall—he didn’t want to be shot from behind—and put a knife to Josh’s neck as Irk advanced.

  “I’ll slash him, I swear I will,” he shouted. Slash him and then carve the hammer and sickle, as they’d done to the bodies of the mujahidin—a kind of signature, to show it was the Red Army and not the Afghan government troops who’d done the killing. It wasn’t the kind of thing you bragged about back home. Most things in war were best left on the battlefield.

  The pipeline bubbled with noise, the hunters coming back to the quarry, calling each other; all they needed was trumpeting horns. Irk saw the rise and fall of Josh’s chest: still alive.

  “Let him go, Rodya.” Irk’s voice quavered.

  “Let me go,” Rodion replied, “or I’ll kill him.” The knife nicked at Josh’s skin, blood welling like rose petals. Rodion bent his head to Josh’s neck and licked the droplets off.

  Irk looked at the nearest Mafioso. He had his pistol outstretched, sighting down the barrel.

  “In the shoulder,” Irk whispered. “Shoot him in the shoulder.”

  The man looked quizzical, but all Irk did was nod slightly: Just do it, don’t ask why.

  “You’ll get a fair trial,” Irk told Rodion. “I’ll tell the court you’re insane. You’ll go to a hospital, not prison. That’s the best you can hope for.”

  Rodion shook his head, and then tilted forward to lick Josh’s neck again. The report from the Mafioso’s gun came so loud that it made Irk jump, flash and crack simultaneous in such a confined space.

  The shot pushed Rodion up the wall, but it was not that which made him lose his grip on Josh, it was the dark stain that suddenly flowered on Rodion’s shirt, the slick that had him clamping his hands to it and screaming in agony that he was losing his blood, losing his blood, they had to help him or he’d die.

  It took four Mafiosi to hold him down, he was flailing around so much. Only when one of them pistol-whipped him did Rodion stop struggling.

  There were crates of vodka as far as Rodion could see, and he knew where he was: the underground warehouse, a stone’s throw from the orphanage. Lev was tugging at the tourniquet on Rodion’s arm, testing it for tightness.

  “The bullet went straight through your shoulder,” he said. “No lasting damage.”

  “Where’s Juku?” Rodion asked.

  “Back in the real world.”

  The 21st Century men had escorted Irk and Josh to the surface, where they’d told Irk that they would handle Rodion from there. Irk had, of course, wanted to take him into custody so that due process could take its course. Due process be damned, they’d replied; the courts were useless, the Mafia was the only outfit that worked around there, and they’d dispense justice themselves. Irk had insisted that Rodya was his collar; he’d lived and breathed this case for weeks. Yes, came the reply, but if it hadn’t been for their manpower, Josh would have been dead and Rodion would still be trawling the underworld for his next victim. Besides, the attacks had been against Lev. Now Lev had plans for him—that was the bottom line.

  Realistically, there was nothing Irk could have done other than return Josh to his parents and then try to round up reinforcements, as if that would do any good. The 21st Century hadn’t told him where they were taking Rodion, much less what they planned to do with him. By the time Irk found them again, it would be too late.

  All the Mafiosi who’d helped in the hunt were there to see Rodion’s fate. They watched him with bewildered curiosity, as if he were an exotic exhibit in the zoo.

  Lev came in, and every man rose to his feet. He took a chair in the center and bade them sit.

  “This is a thieves’ court,” he said, “convened for those who’ve transgressed our rules. You’re not a vor, Rodya, of course, but you’ve killed my children and betrayed my friendship, therefore you’ll be tried under thieves’ law. I’ll be judge, jury, and if necessary executioner. We’ll take the prosecution as read. You know the charges: you’ve killed at least six children. You can ask for a defense lawyer or defend yourself, it’s your choice.”

  “I demand to be tried by a proper court,” Rodion said. The words seemed to have come from somewhere other than inside him; the courage of a desperate man, perhaps.

  “You’re in no position to demand anything. This is a proper court, a damn sight more so than the shambles that passes for official justice.”

  “This is not a proper court, it’s a show trial. Stalin himself would have been proud of this. You’ve only brought me here by force, and it’s force alone that gives you the right to sit in judgment and find me guilty. Why bother with a trial at all? It’s obvious what the outcome will be.”

  “Is that all you have to say?” Lev asked.
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br />   Rodion thought for a moment and shook his head. He cleared his throat and began hesitantly, speaking for his life.

  Afghanistan was a strange place, a clear place. Everything was understandable there, I knew my purpose. In a war, you have to learn to live by the rules, and the quicker you learn them, the longer you’ll have to live by them. I didn’t think about whether I was defending the revolution or the Motherland. I just shot at those who were shooting at me. In the mountains, it was always obvious who was who. The war peeled people’s shells off. It taught me not to believe words, only actions.

  I hated being in Afghanistan; now I hate not being there. The moment I got home, I wanted to go back. The place that had made me half a man was the only place that could make me whole again. Here, I’m fighting against myself all the time, pursuing myself. My only release is in the actual act of killing, just like the alcoholic’s only release is in the act of drinking. For me, vodka’s become blood, and blood’s become murder—I need my fix, it’s that simple. When I gain my release, nothing else matters, place and time seem to telescope. The attacks feel as though they’re over in seconds, but when I come around, I find that I’ve been there for hours. Once the adrenaline’s gone, I get so tired I can hardly keep my eyes open.

  My crimes aren’t the kind that can be punished, either by the courts or by your underworld, so why do you have me here? I’m a monster, a psychopath. I live outside the law—outside the government’s law, outside your law, outside anybody’s law but my own.

  As a vor, Lev, you chose to be an outsider. I don’t have that choice. I’m possessed by evil, so I’m no longer responsible for my actions. The war did this to me. The war in Afghanistan, the war against communism, the war against capitalism, the war we’re always waging, the war against ourselves—they all did it to me.

  I know that I won’t leave here alive. I accept that. In fact, I welcome it, because it’ll put me out of this endless torment; it’ll save another child, another two, several, many. I want you to know that I never tortured them—it was bad enough that I had to kill others to survive, so I did it as quickly and humanely as I could. They trusted me, you see. People like me, the crippled and invalids, we’re used to the adults who shrink from touching us, who at best ignore us and at worst abuse us. But children, they’re curious about us, not threatened. How else did I get so close to them, how else could I have subdued them?