Moskau

by G. Zotov

  Bowing deeply, the waitress offers me a china flask on a tray.

  I nod. My hand shakes as I pour the liquid into a tiny cup. I down it in one gulp.

  Holy fucking shit. My chest burns like the fire in Loki’s eyes. It feels too good.

  The pickled cabbage is crunchy to bite.

  Life is flooding back into me.

  Time for a second drink.

  Here, one begins to think in hokkus. Who needs Aspirin when there’s moonshine?

  I don’t expect Olga — but she’s just appeared in front of me. At first, I take her for a waitress: she’s wearing a kimono too. A black one embroidered with yellow dragons.

  She flashes a sarcastic smile. “It didn’t take you long to lose that Aryan veneer. So it’s vodka now, is it? Where’s your schnapps?”

  I’m not embarrassed. After what happened, I can drink windscreen liquid.

  “Schnapps is German for moonshine,” I help myself to more cabbage. “Slightly more sophisticated, maybe. Do sit down. Have you got what I asked you to get?”

  She nods and reaches under the table for an attache case. Inside is a portable Buch computer. A Sony, of course, the only type purebred Aryans would use. It’s white and very pretty.

  I lick a finger, then touch a button. The system IDs my DNA automatically. The computer begins to reboot.

  Its screen lights up. The Sakura OS is slow and glitchy. Little bells begin to chime their sweet melody.

  “I rented it,” Olga answers my silent question. “Five hundred yen. I paid by card.”

  I type away, then open my personal Shogunet account where I have surveillance camera controls set up, allowing me to monitor them from any place on the globe. Three of the cameras are installed in the Temple of Odin and two more in my apartment. Password: asgard. Not very original, I know. I switch to real time and swivel one of the cameras.

  The temple is absolutely packed with people. Some are wearing the camos and black uniforms of the SS special forces. Others are in plain clothes. They look around themselves as they walk, studying the interior. The camera is low-res but I can make out the puzzled expressions on their faces. I bet. I too was surprised when I’d come round after my fall.

  The sacrificial altar is floating in the air, ghostlike, like a horror movie projection. It’s translucent; you can see right through it. The grotto’s walls quiver like sea waves, rippling.

  One of the officers approaches the statue of Rübezahl, the king of dwarves. Yes, there he is, my stooping white-bearded old man, the work of a fine sculptor chiseled out of a whole chunk of cave granite.

  Now the fun bit. The SS officer touches the statue. He is probably screaming with fear as his hand sinks inside. Rübezahl’s body may look like stone but it now consists of a viscous jelly-like substance.

  What he doesn’t know is that there were four more stone deities lined up next to this one. They disappeared the moment I fainted. And not only them. The sacrificial goat is nowhere to be seen, either.

  A man in a gray shirt and matching pants seems to be in command of the squad. He barks orders; they jump to attention. A big wig. I’ve never seen him before. I move the camera closer, just in case. He turns round. I take a snapshot of him. And another.

  The picture disappears in a flash. What’s happened?

  “He shot at the camera,” Olga explains. “They’ll be over at your apartment at any moment. That’s why we are here. I had a strong premonition that they might locate me soon. That they’d come for me… in the very near future. I was right.”

  I click the Buch’s lid close and top up the bone china with more moonshine.

  “Sehr gut,” I take in the original aroma of good old home brew. “Let’s try and reconstruct what happened. There isn’t much to reconstruct, really. I came back home. You were still handcuffed to your bed. I walked over to you in order to remove them…”

  I look over the bay. Seagulls squawk and squabble over the ocean. The waitress bows deeply to a new customer. I exhale sharply[xi] and down my drink, then hurry to pinch some cabbage with my chopsticks. “… and the next moment we were here. Seven thousand miles away from Moskau. What happened?”

  She laughs softly and rearranges her black hair. She’s unbearably beautiful. “I’ve no idea how it happens. It must be the danger that does it. I can’t control these things. That’s how I teleported into the temple where you later found me. You thought guerrillas had brought me there, remember? Even though the front doors were locked. You lay me under Rübezahl’s statue to dress my wounds. It’s the energy within my head… it works like teleportation. But I never know when it’s going to happen.”

  “Why didn’t you disappear earlier, then? Somehow I don’t think my handcuffs would have stopped you.”

  She clicks her lighter. That’s the Nippon koku: no one would arrest you here for smoking in a café. “Probably because I knew you weren’t a threat.”

  Crashing noise. Howls of agony. Screaming.

  As if in slow motion, I watch as Mikado’s Joy Street caves in. A round crater appears in the middle of the pedestrian zone. The doll houses adorned with red lanterns begin to slide into the chasm; the St. Paul’s Church crumbles, listing to one side, bell tower and all. Hundreds of human figures pour into the crater as it gapes like a huge, smiling lipless mouth. I hear the inhuman screams of dying people. Houses sink through the tarmac which is now fluid like sunflower oil.

  The city dies before my very eyes but I can’t do anything about it. People wail with horror, their bodies turning transparent as if made of fine glass. I can see their hearts, their livers, their brains, I watch their blood run through their veins. Crowds of glass people.

  Uradziosutoku rapidly breaks out into a gossamer net of crevices. Trees snap like matchsticks. The ocean hisses, convulsing, spewing out dead fish. Instinctively I grab a knife from the table.

  I sink it into my right palm already covered in scars.

  Blood splatters onto the plate, mixing with the soy sauce. I look at the girl’s face. Not a face: a skull. A grinning, scowling skull greedily drawing on a cigarette.

  “What are you?” I croak. “What the hell are you?”

  Her gaze alights on me. Her eyes have no pupils. They’re filled with unfathomable darkness.

  “What a strange question,” she lets the smoke out. “Don’t you know yet?”

  Part Two

  The Black Sun

  All are waiting for the light;

  Fear it or fear it not.

  The sun shines out of my eyes,

  It will not go down tonight —

  And the world counts down to 10.

  Rammstein, Sonne

  Chapter One

  Seppuku

  Sakura Hotel, Suite 298

  “…I AM WRITING THIS LETTER in compos mentis. My name is Yamamura Onoda. I am a Major with the Nippon koku General Staff. I am also a Casio representative in the Reichskommissariat Moskau. I plead forgiveness from all those who have suffered as the result of my terrible mistakes that brought about the failure of Operation Yukio Seki[xii].

  Yes, it was none other than myself who had put forward Kiyoshi Itiro, the assistant military translator and my old Karafuto co-worker, as a potential tokko tai — a suicide bomber. I was badly misled, considering the retired geriatric Itiro the best candidate for the job. Suffering from brain cancer, he readily accepted the assignment on condition that his children receive a one-off payment of two million yen from the Mikado Bank.

  His wife Sadako expressed her desire to die together with her husband. Highly appreciating her intention, I agreed: a family of Japanese tourists would arouse minimal suspicion from their target. Our best Tokyo experts built an explosive device to make it look like a clumsy amateurish job made to the anarchists’ instructions supposedly downloaded from the Shogunet. Itiro-san made a recording of a video address, which he had previously rehearsed several times, in which he calmly admitted his support for the Schwarzkopf movement and the Bolshevik Party of Nippon.<
br />
  On December 12 of the Heisei era 23[xiii] (may it last forever!) the Hong Kong Imperial Kommandatur arranged for the Itiro couple to board a Junkers 564 Moskau flight without a security check. As usual, we had no description of the subject even though our secret services guaranteed his presence on board the plane. Following my instructions, Itiro’s wife was going to activate the bomb as the airplane started its approach to Moskau airport. According to Sadako-san, she did switch on the detonator hidden in her purse which, for some reason, failed to activate.

  The woman told the truth. Already after meeting her husband, I studied the detonator and came to the conclusion it had been intentionally disabled. I have no doubt that this had been Itiro-san saving his wife’s life, unwilling to see her die together with him. This was regrettably stupid. By doing so, he missed his chance to complete his mission while his family lost the money.

  Later, he expressed his regret at what he’d done.

  Embittered by the aforementioned failure, I would like to point out that later Itiro-san did everything he could in order to restore his honor and rectify the disgusting consequences of his disabling the detonator. It is only thanks to him that we now have a detailed description of the target, as Itiro-san had watched the Sturmbannführer being escorted with honors down the steps and into a limousine.

  Itiro-san rented an apartment and approached the mission with all seriousness as befits a samurai. He used the operative information I sent him to follow the subject through Moskau, attempting to approach him at a closer distance. On a tip from a Gestapo mole, Itiro-san arrived at the Spirit’s Delight book store and spent the entire day in the shop waiting for the target to arrive.

  Later that evening, he swore by the God Susanoo that the subject had never arrived. Another failure added to my account! Wary of a potential leak, I had never informed Itiro-san of Pavel Loktev’s peculiar behavioral patterns.

  This, in turn, influenced everything that followed.

  Today an uncomplaining Itiro-san pressed the button on a new detonator and, praising the great Mikado, consequently transported himself to the feet of the Goddess Amaterasu. He activated the explosive device by the entrance to the Yebisu massage parlor standing next to the person who bore an uncanny resemblance to the target. Seven people died in the blast, including the bomber himself. I tend to believe that the growing tumor had stripped Itiro-san of his ability to think straight otherwise he’d have been bound to ask himself why Pavel Loktev was wearing an Obergefreiter’s uniform posing as a parking lot security guard. Whatever the case, the target escaped either unharmed or with the slightest of injuries.

  I accept the blame for the failure of my strategy. Years of life in Russland must have corrupted my heart with the rot of irresponsible carelessness. I failed to consider the possibility of Itiro-san not blowing up the plane. By my meticulous planning of the operation, I got drunk on the sophistication of the petals of my ideas. The explosion on board the plane was intended to be a terrorist act performed by a terminally ill fanatic, an old-age loner who’d lapsed into the senility of the Bolshevik ideal. The video of his confession would have convinced the Gestapo that the death of their special agent in the blast was a tragic coincidence. We were quite prepared to plant other evidence aiming to divert attention from the Japanese secret services. The plan was perfect — which was its biggest weakness. I failed to plan for any eventualities.

  A faithful agent prepared to die without hesitation. The enclosed space of the plane. A brilliant cover story and the video confession. What could be better? For the first time in years, my gaze alights on my samurai sword. I find it almost impossible to forgive myself.

  …For the last ten years, I’ve been heading the Moskau intelligence station. I’ve been paid double for the emotional damage. Moskau is indeed a terrible place where one can never relax. Let me assure you that I work hard to earn every yen of that money while some of my colleagues lounge around somewhere on the Solomon Islands or laze away on Ngapali Beach sipping their plum whisky cocktails. I’d have loved to swap places with them: not only with those serving in Asia but also with my European colleagues.

  Some of them might point out anxiously that Europe is a dangerous place. The Resistance is still active in countries like the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Yes, I’d say, but their so-called Resistance is a far cry from the 1940s. It’s all a big theater show. A group of masked youngsters who, breathless with their own audaciousness, rip down the Reich’s flag from the statue of the Little Mermaid or deface a monument to the Führer with spray paint. Every such escapade makes the headlines as TV dooms Europe to an era of terrorism.

  Their Resistance is just a trend. Being a revolutionary and an activist is trendy in Europe. They love nothing better than to write songs of protest and upload banned books to the Net. And then what? The Gestapo apprehends them, they crack and sell all their friends down the river, then indulge in bouts of public repentance on TV, blaming their actions on the side effects of drugs.

  All European Resistance is encapsulated within the Shogunet. Not many Aryans are willing to risk their creature comforts after the Twenty-Year War. Chinese slaves rebuilt European cities from the ruins; an economic boom followed, turning Europe into a land of milk, honey and Mercedes Benz.

  Churchill once promised that if the Germans invaded Britain, his country would fight to the last man. And what do we see? All those weird little campaigns, the so-called flash mobs: young people, terribly proud of themselves, gathering at Das Gros Ben to form a huge phrase FUCK THE NAZIS with votive candles. Can a regime be overthrown with candles? Please. I want my European colleagues’ job.

  Still, it was here that the Nippon koku sent me, into the very heart of quagmires and gloomy towers: Moskau. Here, it’s different. Some Russlanders hate the Germans as invaders while others welcome them as the guarantors of European civilization. But nobody likes Japan.

  You don’t need to believe me but here, everybody praises Japanese art, loves the Japanese cuisine, appreciates Japanese culture… and despises the Japanese. I habitually check my car three times a day to make sure no good-wisher has attached a magnetic bomb to the chassis. I only eat salmon in a few trusted restaurants to avoid food poisoning. I only indulge in late-evening poetry readings with young Kyoto geisha school graduates who’ve mastered the art of the tea ceremony.

  Every day I walk a sword’s edge between Scylla and Charybdis. Guerrillas hunt me for being an ally of Greater Germany. The Reich’s supporters don’t like Asians, either; they’d be more than happy to plant a slug between my eyes if I was imprudent enough to ride the nighttime subway. By Amaterasu, everything’s so complicated here.

  … There was a time when I used to write poetry, painstakingly drawing the symbols on rice paper. I’ve given it up now. I don’t have the inspiration. Moskau eats right through you like a tapeworm, destroying you from the inside. You imbibe the local lifestyle and mentality without even realizing it. I’ve become a Russian. I can chase down a dish of fugu with pure laboratory alcohol with the best of them. It actually tastes better that way.

  I know very well how you expect me to finish this letter.

  I’m very sorry. But my experience of many years in Russland prevents me from performing seppuku — even though my samurai honor bemoans it and my katana is begging to be unsheathed. I understand perfectly well that locating Pavel Loktev isn’t going to be easy, mainly because now he knows that he’s being hunted.

  I’m not looking for excuses but I assure you that I’ve taken all the necessary precautions. Sadako won’t speak. She was taken care of half an hour after the bomb had exploded. Her body has been cremated and won’t be found. We made a new video of Itiro-san before the blast, with all mention of the plane edited out. It’s now being uploaded to the Shogunet. Our priority now is to do our best not to damage our relations with the Third Reich. Greater Germany and the Nippon Koku are the best of friends.

  Not having enemies is awful. You’re sadly forced to spy on your f
riends.

  There’s too much at stake: my Tokyo friends expect the mission to be a success. It’s not the first time we tried to take Loktev out. There were other attempts, performed with surgical precision but equally unsuccessful. The air crash would have been a perfect scenario. Unfortunately, it failed due to Itiro-san’s inopportune sentimentality. I’m going to do it myself now. Casio’s Moskau office is closing. I’m going to find Loktev myself.

  Yamamura Onoda

  Major with the Nippon koku General Staff

  Chapter Two

  The Paradise

  Master Race Avenue, Geli Raubal Hotel

  THE FIRST THING EMERGING from the gloom of Pavel’s memory was the cellar. Back in Paradise, this had been where they sent delinquents. It was a sterile room: no rats or cockroaches there. Still, it was very scary. You spent hours in the pitch black. Gradually, you couldn’t help sensing there was somebody there after all. You wanted to reach out and touch them but you were too scared they might bite your fingers off.

  Pavel too had been sent there on a couple of occasions: once for three hours, on another occasion five. During nap time, big kids told them scary stories, like the one about the boy left there forgotten for two days. He had gone blind and lost his mind. How could you forget it: the way your eyes hurt adapting to daylight when the Paradise’s attendants unlocked the cellar door which bore the sign of two lightning bolts set in a black triangle.

  That was Paradise’s logo, the same as nurses wore on the lapels of their starched lab coats. Sterile girls they were, like incubated clones. They reminded him of dairy maids on a farm. Which was probably the most accurate description, for children were bred there like one would breed cattle. Neat ranks of obedient boys and girls: fair-haired, ginger, strawberry blond, dressed in brown shorts, shirts and pinafores with the ever-present triangle on the sleeve. Not a single smile nor laughter, nothing but the teachers’ snapped orders.