The Darkness Drops

by Peter Clement

  Normally as he walked in the door, the sum of their personas lifted his spirits, adding a touch of swagger to the way he carried himself, but not this morning.

  He passed directly through to his own office.

  Here the posters were all of Bogie--Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep.

  Except today he’d never felt less like Rick, Sam Spade, or Phillip Marlowe.

  He slumped in his chair without bothering to take off his coat, and waited for his visitor.

  They were to meet here at 6:45, an hour before the latest Velma--he called all his secretaries Velma--was due to arrive.

  He and Velma sometimes got in a quickie before opening for business, and the current version was more than willing. He’d have to blame his sudden lack of interest on something. Food poisoning?

  It was 7:05 when Boris Yurskovitch pounded on the locked entrance.

  “Quiet,” Yuri ordered, letting him in. He spoke in English, to gain a psychological advantage over his guest whose Russian had never entirely freed his tongue to the language of Shakespeare.

  Boris was big. Opera-singer big. He filled any room he entered. A loud rolling sound came bellowing out from his barrel chest and echoed down the empty hallway behind him. It was laughter. “Why?” he said. “None of your fellow so-called healers, all of them decadent, carrion-pickers who get fat off our poor sick bones, show up before ten.”

  “There’s the custodial staff,” Yuri answered.

  “Probably all are Russians. Exploited Russians, like rest of us.” Boris adored playing the victim card. As he spoke, his breath exhaled an aroma vaguely like the bouquet of tomato soup.

  “You should know, Boris. You hired them.” The man owned the building. “Give them a raise from some of your millions. Or is that billions by now?”

  Boris ignored the question. He followed Yuri into his office and sank into a couch built for two, pretty well filling it. “Look at you, Yuri. Scared white, like spirit. You should have glow to your face, or no one will believe you spent week fucking your brains out.”

  “Give me what you have,” Yuri said.

  “Have?”

  “Boris, don’t play games.”

  “Games?”

  “Damn it, Boris. I did what you wanted. Now keep up your end of the deal.”

  Boris slammed his hand on the desk, unfolded his meaty fingers, and left his car keys lying there. Their chain was attached to a five-inch-long, forty-five-caliber machine-gun shell, his business card as the biggest arms dealer out of Russia.

  “Is business dying down since the cold war is over?” Yuri had once asked him.

  He’d bellowed that booming, opera-house laugh of his. “Are you kidding? With half the world up for grabs, everyone on planet wants guns.”

  That was five years ago. His beefy face showed no trace of such boisterous black humor now. He reached inside his tent of an overcoat, pulled out a copy of USA Today, and threw it on the desk. “Do you see name Yuri Raskin there?” His voice had become as smooth and hard as polished granite.

  The lead headline read, Anthrax on Capitol Hill: Workers in Tom Daschle’s office the latest victims. Below it another byline stated, Bill Gates’s Microsoft offices in Reno, Nevada, receive letters containing suspicious white powder.

  “No.” Yuri answered, struggling to keep his temper in check.

  “Then they kept their word.”

  “But you said you’d give me--”

  “I said only that my business associates were very put out with your previous refusals to join their venture. Hence the offer you found impossible to refuse.”

  Yuri had dreaded exactly this.

  “Do you want to know tomorrow’s headlines?” Boris continued. “Where anthrax will be found next?” His accent had changed. He could slip in and out of different dialects the way a quick-change artist switched costumes, all part of disguising himself and manipulating others. However, the flip from a thick-tongued banter to an attempt at a more icily precise diction meant Watch out. Boris became his most dangerous when he chose to articulate clearly.

  Yuri said nothing.

  “These people are equal-time players. So last week it was Brokaw’s office at NBC. This week look for anthrax turning up at ABC and, not to leave out the granddaddy of them all, the broadcast-news giant that gave the world the voices of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, CBS. Except there it will be Dan Rather’s team that takes the hit . . .”

  Boris went on speaking with a chilling casualness, each detail made all the more horrifying for the ease with which he laid it out. Yuri felt the grip of the trap tighten its hold. He’d have to play a very delicate game from here on in. Go along just enough to save his skin, yet also delay, keep the need for his services alive in order that they not dispose of him outright.

  “. . . so you don’t want to annoy people who go to such lengths, Yuri.” Now Boris’s tone had become as light as if he were advising how to get along with some cranky patient’s group. “I mean, to embellish such an historic event with a footnote attack of their own for the sole purpose of winning your cooperation, it is brilliant, no? Everybody looking everywhere else for the mailer, all America in a lynch-mob mood--it would take one anonymous call, a whispered warning to the FBI that they better check you out, and a planted stash of same-strain spores hidden in your apartment or here in this office--well, I leave that outcome to your imagination. Did I mention they knew you smuggled an infected lungful of the stuff out of Sverdlovsk?”

  This was a replay of what Boris had already threatened him with a week ago. Nevertheless, Yuri’s anger blazed anew, directed as much at himself as at the man who had so cunningly snared him. He, Yuri Raskin, the king of playing the angles and skirting the corners, the Ural cowboy who had always thrived on living just one step ahead of the world, never expected a thug like Boris Yurskovitch would outsmart him. He’d figured such rogues flocked to him because they sensed a kindred spirit, not because they were setting him up. And he’d allowed them to remain at the core of his practice only because he found their escapades bracing, their daring a delight to be around. They provided him with the same vicarious thrills his movies did, except these characters were the real thing. On the other hand, Edward G. Robinson and Jimmy Cagney would never turn on him and fuck over his life.

  He fought to keep his facial muscles relaxed, his hands from curling into fists, his pulse from jacking up and spreading a flush through his skin. Intuitively he knew that any show of weakness in front of this killer would be a mistake. He also had a sense of sitting on the edge of his seat, watching himself from above, the way he would a tense showdown scene on the screen. Yet this was his movie now, and he had the starring roll. No living vicariously through someone else here. But what to do?

  Go on the attack, an inner voice answered. Stir Boris up, poke that ugly temper of his and get him pissed off. The man might blurt out something useful. Give Yuri a better idea what he was up against. “How do I know you’re not the one fiddling with anthrax, Boris? I could always go to the cops myself, unburden my soul and mention your name--”

  “Yuri!” Boris’s forehead corrugated itself into a field of thick furrows, instantly yielding a bumper crop of hurt and disapproval. “We are both victims here. I’m simply doing what I have always done--play Russian middleman to set up deals, put people together with clients who, given what I trade in, are sometimes unsavory.”

  Typical Boris, already distancing himself from his dirty work. Yuri had heard enough of his stories to know the man farmed out his kills, delegating the messy acts to others so he’d never see the blood or hear the screams. He also turned a neat trick of forgetting. He might start out pretending not to know about a murder he’d ordered, albeit full of the coy pride most gangsters took in their deeds, but eventually he would actually seal off all recollection of ever having had a part in it. If Boris did mention one of these forgotten victims, he appeared to genuinely try to recall if he’d learned of the death listening to the radi
o or read about it in a newspaper.

  “Whoever these clients are, you fingered me to them, Boris--”

  “I suggested a most likely candidate, is all. In this case, a brilliant person with special medical expertise to sort through the science of it, but one who also possessed an incriminating enough background that made incentives to play along all the more persuasive. You were natural pick, dear Yuri. Would you feel better about it if we split the finder’s fee they paid me--”

  “Who’s they Boris. You keep making it a point not to tell me that little item.”

  “They, Yuri, they! The usual they. There is always a they. The they in Sverdlovsk, the they in Moscow, the they in every government on the planet. In this country it is the kind of they everyone thinks of when someone says grassy knoll. So better be good Yuri, because your job at hand is to make sure no they comes after you. And you do that, dear Yuri, by continuing to keep our new they happy. Which means no more questions, because, for the present, they prefer to remain anonymous. That way you are not a threat. Better for them, better for you.”

  “If I’m not a threat, how come I saw your siloviki shadowing me the whole week?” Siloviki, from the Russian sila, meant strength. It referred to the increasingly influential network of ex-KGB or former military officials who now marketed their special skills to private businessmen or the so-called new breed of politicians back in Moscow.

  “Really? How clever of you. Of course, we meant you to see them. A reminder that your every step will be watched, in case you have any ideas of doing something stupid. By the way, did I mention they were impressed by your techniques with the target--”

  “That woman? She was a leathery dwarf who smelled of tobacco. And what did I steal from her, anyway?”

  “Get used to her, Yuri.”

  “Impossible”

  “Get used to her. And there will be others. Look at it this way. You will simply do what you have always done--work that magic pecker of yours to charm the panties off a few ladies. We will tell you who they are and when you will approach them. The fact they have a certain expertise and happen to be in charge of what we want will be incidental.”

  “A fucking Mata Hari in pants! I’d rather go to the FBI.”

  “Yuri! Yuri! Yuri! What is your problem here? Think of this as a chance to play outlaw for real, not like all these celluloid guys on the wall whom you admire.” He gestured dismissively toward the three Bogies.

  Yuri didn’t think it an ideal moment to point out that in these roles, Humphrey Bogart played the good guy.

  “You know you want to,” Boris continued. “It is role of a million lifetimes, handed to you on a platter. Much better than your moving pictures.”

  “All so you can get what? A million pictures of George Washington?”

  Boris’s eyelids shot upward as if he’d just been reminded of something. “I knew there was another reason why I cut you in. As a favor. It’s the business opportunity of your career because you will get the big cut. An American dream, Yuri. Doing well while doing what you love--”

  “Don’t make me vomit. I’m more likely to end up getting killed, judging by how easily they already sprinkled a little death around, just as a persuader.”

  Boris blew a puff of air through bearded lips, and waved off the possibility. “Now, Yuri, listen carefully, this is important. I’m sending one of my girls to you. I want you to make sure she’s clean--”

  “Wait a minute. You blackmailed me, put my life in I don’t know what kind of danger, and I’m still supposed to be the friendly family doctor to you and yours?”

  His pink cheeks bulged into dumpling-sized mounds joined by a wide smile. “Why not? Total control over you makes me trust our doctor-patient relationship. Now don’t get me wrong. She is good girl, Yuri.” He’d changed topics as silky-smoothly as his Mercedes changed gears. And the thick-tongued accent was back. “But it pays to be careful, no?”

  Boris should know. He also ran a high-priced escort service, bringing in teenagers from Bosnia and Serbia as well as Russia.

  Yuri rolled his eyes. “You’ve got chutzpah, Boris,” he said, resorting to one of the first words he’d learned after arriving in New York.

  The round face beamed. “And I’m not even Jewish. Now about this girl--”

  “Is she another of your personal projects?”

  “Of course. Wait until you see her.”

  “I’m tired of treating their shattered egos after you dump them.”

  “No, no, this one is different. Once you make sure she is clean, it will be like wedding night for her and me.”

  “You’ve had a thousand wedding nights with a thousand girls.”

  “But only one was real. Which reminds me, I’m also sending Tania to visit you.”

  Tania Yurskovitch, his wife, made medical appointments the way some women booked manicures. She always described obscure gynecological problems, but only offered vague symptoms, then got herself a little too excited during the pelvic examination, at least for Yuri’s liking. Not that he wasn’t flattered, but Boris, being an old-fashioned Russian, believed most firmly that what was good for his gander definitely wasn’t good for his goose, and wouldn’t take kindly to so much as a hint that his beloved Tania had strayed, even on an examining table. “Make sure she books on a different day than your latest project,” Yuri told him.

  He looked hurt again. “Of course. Do you take me for fool?”

  “What’s the matter with Tania this time?”

  “It is another of her woman’s troubles. Down there. She claims she can’t feel anything. Or that it hurts when we do it.”

  “Look, I’m not a specialist in gynecology--”

  “That is okay. I have read up on the topic myself, using the Internet. They call it dyspareunia. You can give her clitoral massage. See if she is for real, or just mad at me.”

  “Whoa!” Yuri broke into a sweat, fearing Tania had informed on their sessions together. “Doctors don’t do that anymore, Boris, at least not in America--”

  “I think she is faking. It all started after she found out about my last personal project. So you give the massage to catch her out.”

  Yuri slumped back in his chair, momentarily relieved. “Boris, you’re a sociopathic bastard, you know that? A goddamned, no-conscience, amoral, compartmentalizing sociopathic bastard. You suit yourself day in, day out, break every law of man and God in the process, yet remain totally devoid of guilt and regrets. I’ll never be that free, Boris. I like to tell myself I am, but I never quite completely pull it off. Sometimes I envy you for it.”

  The big man made that puffing noise with his lips and gave the waving-it-off-as-inconsequential sign again. “I am also your landlord, Yuri. Did I mention rent is due?”

  Five hours later that same Monday, October 15, 2001, 6:21 A.M. IPT

  Waianae Mountain Range, West Oahu

  First light silhouetted the steep jagged peaks that enclosed the high end of the valley behind him, then crept along the knife-edge ridges that bracketed it on either side. The lower basin that opened onto the sea a mile below remained in shadow.

  One tentative chirp came from a banyan tree that encroached on the back of Terry Ryder’s house, and immediately the whole area erupted in an answering din of cheeps, caws, peeps, warbles, squawks, even the crow of a rooster.

  Terry grinned, amused as always at the crazy cacophony of it all, and took another sip of coffee. He’d been out on the front deck for hours, his favorite perch in this lookout home. “Perfect for a paranoid,” his friends teased, “because he can see who’s coming.” The structure itself was a spacious, square-log anomaly in a land where wood was scarce and stucco king, but harking back to his boyhood roots in the mountains of Colorado, he’d preferred the feel and look of cedar.

  Busy on his cell phone, he had tracked down the last few people on his dream-team list. There’d been no refusals. His evocation, “Play bad guy. Dream up your best hit,” brought out the latent outlaw in them all, set
ting off an overly gleeful competition to out-evil each other. “They gotta get out of the lab more,” he muttered, after finalizing the arrangements for everyone to meet at Pearl.

  He took another sip of coffee, and looked up at the mountains on either side of him.

  The newness of the peaks, their sharp, not-yet-worn-down escarpments, never failed to carry him back in time. Standing among them he felt near the rawness of their creation when the land had erupted from the sea, the lava cooled, and vegetation first coated the steep sides of volcanic rock in lush russet folds. Yet it was as if he’d traveled even further, to the beginnings of earth itself, when valleys such as this one, green fertile cradles, stood silent all over the planet, expectant and ready to receive whatever life crawled out of the water.

  The trill of his cell phone yanked him forward eighty million years.

  The call identity feature indicated a Texas exchange.

  “You got a result?” he said, recognizing the number. It belonged to a level four virology facility at San Antonio. One thing to be said about working with the general, it got him top priority status for what he needed. In this case, a laboratory that specialized in DNA analysis had laid aside their usual four-month backlog, and placed themselves at his disposal.

  “Do you know what a pain in the ass your general is?” the supervisor of the place griped.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Unfortunately the guy proceeded to do just that. “I’m fifty jobs behind. That means tests by the hundreds waiting to be done on traces of blood, semen, secretions, tissues, fingernail scrapings--all the stuff it takes to nail murderers, rapists, and pedophiles these days--are on hold. I miss their court date, they walk. And then there’s the falsely accused who’ve got lawyers breathing down my neck for their results. And how about our share of the body parts coming out of New York--”