Duel of Assassins

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Duel of Assassins Page 13

by Dan Pollock


  In late December of 1979, Taras and selected members of his ZSKA fencing squad—specifically the Spetsnaz contingent—were told by Lieutenant Colonel Dokuchayev they would be visiting the Olympic Village the next day. This puzzled them, as the training facilities were still being laid out at the huge athlete-housing complex a dozen kilometers to the south, and even when completed would not be on a par with those available at their own club. Dokuchayev smiled. This “Village,” he explained, was not in Moscow, or even in the RSFSR, the Russian Republic, but in the Ukraine. “Olympic Village” was the nickname for the principal Spetsnaz training center in Kirovograd, southeast of Kiev.

  It seemed an irregular outing—half-a-day by An-26 turboprop, troop train and ZIL 8x8 army trucks, to be deposited in the middle of a godforsaken compound somewhere on the southern steppe, then marching through the slush toward a dismal, cement-block recreation hall—all just to match blades with some intermediate-grade fencers. But Taras and his mates were soldiers, after all, and Dokuchayev definitely hadn’t asked their opinions.

  Taras had hoped perhaps to glimpse some real Spetsnaz combat training in the process, but all he saw was the dark tracery of parachute towers against the early winter twilight. Then they were inside the big, bright-as-day, overheated sport hall, surrounded by the echoing cacophony of half-court basketball, box-and-kick martial arts and several fencing bouts all proceeding at once.

  Taras was directed toward the saber strip, where a tall, undisciplined left-hander was leaping to and fro, swinging wildly, immediately confirming Taras’ suspicions about the level of skill he should expect. He passed a glance to Dokuchayev.

  “Are we supposed to critique them?” he asked.

  “No, just fight. That’s what they asked for, and that’s what they’ll get. I’ve put you in the next round.”

  Taras moved off to begin his warmups, but kept an eye on the saber strip. He was fascinated by the southpaw, who, despite his excessive movements and being assessed a point for hard slashing, was scoring repeatedly. Of course, his more orthodox opponent wasn’t showing much aggression.

  The six-minute bout ended with the left-hander winning five-two. They saluted—the left-hander excessively, according to strict saber etiquette—and came away together as they stripped off their mesh masks and shook hands.

  Taras gasped. The victor, now twenty meters away and striding directly toward him with a wide grin of recognition, was none other than Marcus Jolly.

  Fourteen

  “What the hell are you doing here, Cossack?” Marcus asked after releasing Taras from a bear hug.

  “What does it look like? I joined special forces to track you down, Cowboy. I had to. You never write.”

  “I was going to get around to it. Trouble is, I’ve been doing all this classified shit. I’m not even supposed to tell myself what I’ve been up to. But hey, are you really in Spetsnaz, or just fencing with the Central Army club?”

  “Both. By the way, your Russian is very good, Marcus. You need to work on your zh’s, though. They should be more guttural, more from the chest.”

  “Idi v’zhopu!—Kiss my ass!”

  “That’s a little better.”

  “And fuck your mother. Come on, Cossack, you can answer all my dumb questions later. Right now I want to show you off.”

  Marcus put his arm around Taras and escorted him to every part of the large hall, even walking through the middle of a basketball game to introduce him around and interrupting a kick-boxing match so Taras could shake hands with the referee. There were some young women as well, a quartet of moderately attractive foilists doing their intensive pre-bout stretching.

  “I got to warn you about this guy,” Marcus said, after introducing Taras as his best buddy. “A good-looking devil and a real swordsman, if you know what I mean, but he’s got a twisted mind.”

  Taras laughed along with the girls, but wondered at the odd joke. Could the Cowboy, whose rugged handsomeness Taras had always envied, possibly feel jealousy toward him?

  Finally they worked their way back to the fencing strip, where Taras met Marcus’ coach, Captain Merab Balavadze, a stocky Georgian with a grisly scar furrowing his right cheek from ear to corner of mouth. A saber slash, undoubtedly. Balavadze put out a big paw and grinned—or tried to, but, with severed facial muscles on one side, the result was a lopsided grimace. Dark, heavily lashed Georgian eyes, however, retained their good humor.

  “In case you’re wondering,” Marcus joked, “Merab is not a graduate of Heidelberg University. Says his fencing teacher used to make him practice saber without a mask. Says he’s going to make all of us try it one of these days.”

  The captain’s eyes sparkled. “You’d be surprised how it encourages students to pay close attention to their parries.”

  “I bet it does, sir. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Likewise. My old friend Ossip has been telling me very good things about you, lad. Olympic material, certainly in team saber, maybe even individual.”

  “No bullshit, Cossack?” Marcus said. “Are you that good?”

  “Win your next match,” said Captain Balavadze, “and maybe you will find out just how good Sergeant Arensky is.”

  Until that moment neither Taras nor Marcus had bothered to check the pairings. A glance at the chalkboard showed them that Balavadze was correct. If Marcus won another bout, and Taras his first two, they would meet in the semifinal round.

  “I’ve never actually seen you fight, Taras. But you’ve just seen me. Do I stand a chance against you, or are you going to kick my butt?”

  “It’s hard to say. You’re pretty... damn unorthodox, Marcus. What are you doing fencing anyway? You’re supposed to be jumping out of airplanes.”

  “I do plenty of that. I don’t even bother wearing a parachute anymore, I’m that good. Fencing is just a hobby.”

  “Why saber? It’s not a beginner’s weapon.”

  “Who you calling a fucking beginner? I’ve been doing this six months, Cossack, and so far I’m beating everybody here, including Merab once or twice. You forget, I studied Japanese-style sword-fighting—kendo, kenjutsu, bojutsu, all that shit. Saber isn’t so different.”

  “I’m sorry, Marcus. I didn’t mean—”

  “Forget it. There’s another reason, if you want to know the truth. You mentioned your skill at saber to Eva way back, and it kind of stuck in my mind. What do you think? Maybe I secretly want to be like you, huh, Cossack?”

  “Very funny.”

  “I might be serious.”

  “You might be full of crap. If anyone has been a copycat, it’s me. And I am serious. Why do you think I tried to get into Spetsnaz?”

  “I was wondering. You seemed pretty well grooved in out there at that officer factory.”

  Taras put his hand lightly on Marcus’ knee. “Oh, I was, Cowboy—till I saw that absolutely adorable little powder-blue beret you had on that day in the park. And suddenly I just wanted one—so much!”

  Marcus flicked Taras’ hand away. “Zhopachnik! Did I pronounce that right?”

  “Not bad. Anyway, it turned out Spetsnaz had no interest in me as a real soldier, only as a fencer. And if I don’t make the Olympics, who knows? I may be out on my ass.”

  “No, my friend, once you’re in the brotherhood—sportsman, commando, makes no difference—it’s for life. We stay in touch now, Cossack, no matter what. One for all, all for one, all that musketeer shit. But we’ll talk later, or what do they say—‘converse in steel’? Right now you got a bout coming up.”

  Taras, in fact, had left it a bit late, and didn’t have time to properly warm up. It didn’t matter. His first contest, with a brawny and energetic young soldier, took less than half the allotted six minutes. Taras scored a clean sweep, five-zero, scarcely breaking a sweat. In fact, it might have been quicker yet, had Taras really wished, for his opponent had no notion of defense. At one point Arensky had scored three consecutive head touches, and won when his opponent was penalized for retreating
a second time off the end of the strip.

  The young athlete smiled ruefully when it was over, and challenged Taras playfully to a duel with any other weapon in the entire world, from AK-47s to the Soviet Army’s legendary small spade.

  “Sure,” Taras said. “But I’m betting on you.”

  After a short tea break he dispatched his second opponent with only slightly more fuss, yielding but two touches. Taras was beginning to suspect that he and his Moscow mates had been transported all this way to administer an object lesson to the local brigade of Spetsnaz supermen—a surmise Captain Dokuchayev stubbornly refused to confirm or deny.

  But Taras was informed, moments after his second victory, that Marcus had just narrowly upset one of their better team members, a man who had almost gone to the last European championships. And Marcus had managed to do it again despite losing a penalty point.

  Taras experienced a strange feeling at this startling news—but it wasn’t surprise. On the contrary, he was filled with a sense of inevitability, as though it had all happened before. Yet he and Marcus had never competed directly in anything. Oh, there had been the brief rivalry over Eva Sorokina. And the friendly contests they’d staged to break the monotony of their Trans-Siberian rail trip. Like arm wrestling, in which the older Marcus had usually prevailed. And chess, which was strictly no contest, with Taras winning easily even after retracting his best moves. But the two had never seriously measured themselves against each other. And now they were about to match swords. Six minutes, five touches, no draws allowed. Taras turned around.

  Marcus was standing right behind him, grinning.

  “Looks like we’re on.”

  “Yes, it does, doesn’t it?”

  “Give me your best, Cossack. Don’t do me any fucking favors.”

  “I won’t.”

  Taras walked away to a far corner of the sport hall, lay back on a tumbling mat, legs elevated against the wall, willed himself to relax. He felt oddly nervous, as though it were suddenly the Olympics.

  The truth was, he thought, he really didn’t want to fight Marcus. Their friendship seemed poised, all these years, on a knife-edge of rivalry, had been born of rivalry—and the sudden, devastating loss of the dear girl they had both desired. Their camaraderie, then, was Eva’s only legacy to them. And it was that precious, intangible thing that Taras felt now in jeopardy.

  He tried to tell himself he was making too much of what was, after all, only a simple duel. But it wouldn’t work. Fear persisted, fear of loss—of something, dammit, something that he prized—enough apprehension, at any rate, to make a shambles of his usual pre-bout preparation. When he tried to visualize the match and moves ahead—which he often was able to do in surprising detail—he drew a complete blank. He could not see himself winning, as was certainly expected of him. Yet neither did he see himself losing to Marcus. There was only an impending void—caused by his mind’s refusal to grapple with an insoluble problem.

  Suddenly a teammate was calling his name. It was time. Taras returned to the fencing area.

  His opponent was bouncing up and down on the end of the strip and grinning as Taras walked up. “Let’s boogie,” Marcus called out in English, showing no apparent reluctance for the coming duel.

  So what’s the matter with me, then? Taras thought suddenly. Let’s just go for it—give the cocky bastard a fencing lesson!

  They faced off in the center of the two-meter by fourteen-meter-long strip, lightly tapped each other’s chest, then stepped back to salute—a quick flourish, in which weapons were pointed at each other, lifted with guards brought to chin, then whipped downward.

  Marcus kept smiling as he slid his mesh mask forward, and Taras smiled right back, for whatever it was worth. Then he helmeted and crouched balletically on-guard—keeping heels light, rear fist on hip, fighting arm forward, blade vertical, inviting tierce. Poised on the sidelines, the president of the jury—one of the senior ZSKA members—shouted “Go!”

  They engaged blades in tierce, and Taras felt his opponent’s considerable strength at once, as Marcus attempted to beat Taras’ blade outside with sheer force of steel, in order to uncover a larger target. Behind his mask Taras figuratively shook his head. Did the crazy Cowboy really imagine that sort of thing would work against an experienced fencer? Taras simply slid his weapon around Marcus’, gliding metal on metal. But Marcus pressed blades again, and the saber dance continued, like two boxers circling, jabbing, feeling each other out, measuring each other’s reach, speed and power.

  Taras suffered the time-wasting rigmarole, mainly because it afforded a moment to assess the peculiar problems of a left-handed opponent. Certain differences were obvious—a narrower opening to the chest, for instance, and reduced effectiveness of point attacks. Dokuchayev had promised to recruit more left-handers—perhaps Marcus was a candidate—but as it was, the top-echelon ZSKA club fencers were mostly righties, and Taras had had to rely on mirror practice to simulate facing an opposite-handed opponent. Marcus, of course, would have fenced almost exclusively right-handers.

  Well, Taras thought, the Cowboy would need a larger advantage than that in the next six minutes—if the bout lasted that long.

  But Taras decided not to rush matters, to let Marcus make the play. He didn’t have long to wait. The Cowboy exploded forward, slashing to head, then to chest. Taras parried, moving smoothly out of range, while mentally inventorying the numerous flaws in Marcus’ technique. The footwork, for instance, was more appropriate to a boxer; the Cowboy bounced loosely forward and back on the balls of his feet rather than employing the rapid, floor-skimming steps Taras and his teammates had spent hours perfecting. And Marcus’ parries were too large, uneconomical, taking him again and again out of sound defensive position.

  But Marcus’ recoveries were startlingly fast, and his bladework remarkable. Marcus had already handled dozens of Taras’ ripostes. Undoubtedly, Taras thought, the Westerner’s very erraticism tended to confuse some opponents. Besides, fencing was a fight, not an exhibition of style; points were awarded for hits, not good form.

  The tempo of the duel quickened, the rhythmic cymbal-clash of steel coming in bursts, longer or shorter, with fleeting rests between, accompanied by the stamp and squeal of shoes on the rubberized strip and the incessant gasps and grunts of combat, sibilant, guttural, plosive. The right-of-way flashed back and forth between them several times a second, as each attack was initiated, blocked and countered, riposted and counter-riposted.

  From a parry, Marcus made a half-lunge, then flèched, sprinting forward with a feint toward the head. As Taras parried in quinte, Marcus, with full extension and lightning twist of wrist and forearm, slashed at Taras’ open flank.

  Taras had seen it coming, but the sheer explosiveness of the move carried the day, and Marcus scored a touch.

  “Yes!” cried the referee, throwing up his hand to indicate a successful hit.

  It was one-zero as they resumed play.

  Taras had seen enough. He lunged, Marcus parried in tierce, but Taras whipped his blade over and caught Marcus’ arm. Marcus’ riposte hit an instant later, and halt was called.

  After quick deliberation, Marcus’ riposte was adjudged delayed and the point was awarded to Taras on the continuation.

  One-all.

  Taras was beginning to enjoy himself. Marcus was certainly a challenging opponent. And he was seeming suddenly a little less idiosyncratic than in his earlier bouts—maintaining better distance, tightening up his hand- and footwork, making fewer meaningless foot and head feints, using less steel. And, Taras noted, his opponent had also learned the correct lesson from the last point and was now taking care to cover the elbow of his fighting arm.

  Was the Cowboy, perhaps, growing a little wary of the Cossack?

  The answer came an instant later, as Marcus exploded catlike again, flèching forward—making a running attack, which Taras neatly avoided. As Marcus’ momentum carried him off the two-meter-wide strip, a halt was called, and Marcus penal
ized two meters backward.

  The play continued, phrases and patterns becoming more intricate, with more deception, composite attacks and secondary intentions. But Taras’ superior footwork began to tell, frustrating Marcus again and again as the Cossack floated just out of blade reach. Then, while maintaining long range, Taras scored with a narrow parry and riposte to top cuff.

  Two-one.

  A moment later Taras, indulging a slight didacticism perhaps, was maneuvering to score in exactly the same way, when Marcus totally surprised him and, by sheer strength, simply overrode Taras’ tierce parry to score an outside cut to the shoulder.

  Taras couldn’t recall that ever having happened to him, certainly not since early days. It was suddenly two-all, and Taras felt a twinge of panic. There was no way Marcus Jolly should be fencing even with him. But dammit, he was!

  Taras resumed furiously, pressing the attack and letting his own temperament take control; when Marcus feinted the same outside attack, Taras went for it—and lost another quick point to an inside chest cut.

  He was down two-three.

  The referee gave the warning for the final minute. Taras imagined he could see Marcus grinning through the mesh mask.

  Got to give the bastard credit, Taras thought. It was no longer a question of not doing Marcus any “fucking favors”; Taras was fencing as well as he knew, and was on the verge of losing. And Marcus wasted no time, crouching unusually low and attacking with what Taras thought must be samurai-style bladework. This Taras easily parried. Then, as Marcus advanced, Taras, instead of retreating, lunged forward and scored a head touch.

  Three-all.

  Seconds after resuming, time ran out. By convention, a point was added to each side to bring the score to four-all. The two opponents grabbed a moment’s respite. Perspiration now stung their eyes behind the heavy masks, soaked their gantleted hands and darkened their padded tunics. But it was time to go on. They crouched once more, touched sabers. They were entering unlimited “sudden death” overtime. Whoever scored next would win.

 

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