It was, he supposed, all part of becoming middle-aged ... but why hadn’t he noticed his youth slipping away until it was too late to prepare for it?
Reaching the van now, he pulled the stand around back and knelt to connect it to the trailer hitch. Forty million, forty million, forty million. Given the size of the jackpot, maybe he should have bought more than a single ticket this week, he thought. He’d heard it made no difference in the odds if you had one or a hundred, going strictly by the math. But still ...
Julius had nearly finished hitching up the stand when he heard hurried footsteps behind him. He jerked his head around, startled. They seemed to be coming from around the corner, on Fifth Avenue.
A moment later the woman turned onto the block.
At first Julius thought she was probably a hooker. What respectable woman would be out on the street at this hour, let alone on such a frigid morning? Anyway, despite the citywide cleanup campaign, there was still a thriving skin trade in the neighborhood—like the drive-through line, as it was called, right over on Twenty-eighth and Lex, where you’d see the cars double- and-triple parked on busy Friday nights, heads bobbing under the dashboards.
As she came walking in his direction, though, Julius found himself thinking that she really didn’t look like a streetwalker, at least not like any of the girls he’d seen in this part of town, most of whom plastered on their makeup an inch thick and dressed to advertise their goods even if it meant freezing their behinds off. In fact, she seemed more like one of the businesswomen who’d be stopping to buy a croissant from him in a few hours.
Wearing a tweed overcoat, dark slacks, and a beret that was pulled down almost to her ears, she was a striking beauty, with an exotic, high-cheekboned face, and a wedge of straight black hair blowing back over her shoulders in the wind.
She walked right up to him now, stepping quickly through the darkness, vapor puffing from her mouth.
“Help me,” she said, sounding very upset. “Please.”
Julius stared at her in confusion.
“What?” he said awkwardly. “What—what’s the matter?”
She stopped maybe an inch away from him, her large black eyes meeting his own.
“I need a ride,” she said.
He frowned. “I don’t understand ...”
“Here, let me show you,” she said, and fumbled in her shoulder bag.
Julius watched her with growing confusion. Why would she walk up to a perfect stranger and ask ... ?
Before he could complete the thought, he heard a rustling sound behind him, then suddenly felt something hard and cold push against the back of his head.
The woman nodded slightly.
Not to him, he realized, but to whoever had stolen up on him from the shadows.
His heart knocked in his chest. He’d been tricked, distracted —
Julius never heard the silenced Glock go off, never felt anything except the jolt of the muzzle against his head as the trigger was pulled and the bullet went ripping through his skull, blowing out his right eye and a large chunk of his forehead.
As his body dropped faceup to the ground, its remaining eye still wide with shock, the pistol angled downward, spitting three more muffled rounds into his face.
Gilea looked both ways, saw that the street was empty, and then crouched over the body, avoiding the puddle of blood that was already spreading over the sidewalk around it. She unpinned the vender’s license from the front of the parka and slipped it into her purse. She hastily searched through the coat and pants pockets, found a wallet and key ring, then glanced up at the bearded man with the gun.
“Let’s get out of here, Akhad,” she said, tossing him the keys.
He slipped the Glock under his jacket, opened the side of the van, then returned to the corpse and dragged it in behind the front seat.
Out on the street, Gilea finished hitching the vender’s stand to the back of the van, went around the side nearest the curb, and leaned her head in through the panel door. She noticed a blanket on the floor of the rear compartment and tossed it over the body. Then she climbed into the passenger seat.
Sitting beside her, the bearded man found the ignition key amid the cluster in his hand and started up the engine.
They pulled away from the curb, driving west along Twenty-eighth Street, the vender’s stand bumping along in tow.
The van rolled into the auto repair lot at Eleventh Avenue and Fifty-second Street at ten minutes past five. Although the shop would not open for business until 8:30, the garage door was elevated and Akhad drove right in. Three men in gray mechanics’ coveralls were waiting inside near the door to the office.
Gilea pushed out of her door and jumped down off the running board.
“Where’s Nick?” she asked.
“On his way,” one of the men said in Russian.
She gave him a look of displeasure. “He should have been here.”
The man didn’t answer. Gilea let the silence expand.
“The body’s in the van,” she said finally. “You’ll have to dispose of it.”
“Right.”
She reached into her purse for the laminated vender’s license, and handed it to him.
“That should be altered immediately,” she said. “And I want the stand ready by tonight.”
“It’ll be done.”
“It had better,” she said. “We have less than three days.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any problems.”
She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
“It’s miserably cold in here,” she said. “How can you take it?”
He nodded toward the van and grinned.
“It helps to keep busy,” he said.
THIRTEEN
VARIOUS LOCALES DECEMBER 31, 1999
WITH JUST MOMENTS TO GO UNTIL AIRTIME, ARKADY Pedachenko was having trouble deciding how to begin his weekly television program. Of course this had nothing to do with any format change or lack of preparation. Each broadcast invariably opened with a ten-to-fifteen-minute spot in which he sat alone on camera and editorialized about a variety of issues. This was followed by a phone-in segment that gave Pedachenko a chance to address his viewers in a conversational, interactive mode, supposedly taking their calls at random—although the questions and comments were, in fact, mostly scripted, and fed to him by plants in the network audience. The second half hour of the show featured interviews or panel discussions with politicians and other public figures.
No, his problem wasn’t the format. Pedachenko valued structure above all else and was averse to deviations from the tried and true. Nor was the show’s content in doubt, since his opening remarks were already cued-up on the teleprompter, and his guest, General Pavel Illych Broden of the Russian Air Force, had arrived at the studio on schedule and was presently in the “green room,” as the producers called it, getting ready for his appearance.
It was, rather, a question of style, of tone, that was occupying Pedachenko’s mind right now. Should he deliver his commentary with his usual strident flair, or take a softer, cooler stance? His media consultants had advised the latter, suggesting he avoid anything that might be interpreted as pessimism at a time when viewers were emotionally geared for a celebration, longed to forget their hardships, and were in desperate need of inspiration from their leaders. On the other hand, what better occasion than the eve of the new millennium to stir their emotions? To remind them of the evils of internationalism, and the failure of governmental policies which had been passed down directly from Yeltsin to Starinov? To present himself as the only man to lead the country forward at a critical juncture in history?
Pedachenko thought about it. He was not someone to let an opportunity go to waste. But a little surface restraint might be a good idea. He would make it clear to his audience that there was room for hope and optimism as they stepped into the twenty-first century ... If they followed along the path he was charting out for them.
“Sixty seconds!”
the stage manager announced.
Pedachenko glanced at his image in the monitor. A handsome man of fifty with brush-cut blond hair, a carefully trimmed mustache above a mouth full of white teeth, and a build conditioned by frequent and rigorous exercise, he viewed his good looks chiefly as a tool, important for whatever competitive advantage they gave him rather than reasons of vanity. He had learned as a boy that a loose and easy smile could gain the indulgence of his parents and teachers, and later in life had found that same charming manner useful in attracting women to his bed, and ingratiating him with people of influence. He knew his acceptance as a media personality owed as much to his telegenic features as his political opinions, and it didn’t bother him at all. What mattered was summoning up popular support any way he could. What mattered was getting what he wanted.
He motioned to a hot spot on his forehead and a makeup woman scurried from behind the camera, brushed some powder on it, then dashed off the set again.
The stage manager raised his hand and counted down the seconds to airtime, ticking them off with his fingers. “Four, three, two, one ...”
Pedachenko looked at the camera.
“Friends and fellow citizens of the Russian land, good evening,” he said. “As we join in preparing for a new century, I believe we would do well to look back a moment and stand in remembrance of history. And as we strive toward a greater future, let us allow ourselves to feel a noble rage at the slackness of authority that has damaged our national will, and caused so many of the problems that we—every one of us—must face. Two centuries ago, in the first Patriotic War, our soldiers fought against Napoleon’s Grand Army and drove them from our capital in defeat. Earlier in our present century, we again mustered our courage, our determination as a people, to defend our soil from German fascists, overcoming them in what came to be known as the Great Patriotic War. Tonight, then, let us all commit to the final Patriotic War. It is a sacred war that will be fought not on the Field of Mars but a moral battleground; a war in which we are threatened not by guns and bombs, but by cultural stagnation and decadence. A war, my dear countrymen, that demands we examine our souls, stand by our cherished traditions, and fight temptation with iron discipline ...”
“... war that cannot be won by scampering after American dollars, or standing with our hands out for American bread crumbs like hopeless beggars, or letting our younger generation be corrupted by American fashion and music,” Pedachenko was saying, his voice earnest and persuasive. “I do not deny that things are bad, but we must take responsibility for ourselves ...”
Watching him on the television screen in his office, Starinov had to give him credit. Grinding away at the same old themes, yet finding sensitive points in the national psyche that no one else in recent times had struck as effectively. His use of the phrases “sacred war” and “noble rage,” both allusions to the most famous military anthem of World War Two, was nothing less than brilliant. And repackaging his familiar political agenda as a new Patriotic War was an inspired, even sublime manipulation of simmering passions, evoking Russian pride at its deepest roots, likening his country’s current problems to the hardships of the past, and placing the struggle to overcome them within the same context as legendary battles against foreign invaders ... battles won, in each instance, only after the motherland fell back on its own resources, and its citizens and soldiers mobilized in an explosive uprising of solidarity.
Starinov inhaled, exhaled. He would never forget the May Day celebration of 1985, the fortieth anniversary of the victory against the Nazis—huge crowds gathered for the memorial ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Park, the thunderous procession of soldiers and tanks and marching bands, the fireworks splashed across the sky over Red Square, the inspirational songs and waving Soviet banners, the groups of aged World War Two veterans passing in military lockstep, straight and dignified and somehow glorious despite their frailty ...
Starinov had stood with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and other high-ranking Party officials that day on a balcony of the Lenin Museum, observing the endless parade, his eyes swelling with tears of pride, convinced that in spite of the failings of Communism, in spite of its social and economic problems, the Soviet Union would stand strong and vital and unified as it advanced toward the future.
He understood the appeal of Pedachenko’s fervent rhetoric all too well, was even moved by it at a heartfelt level he could not control, which was what made it so acutely dangerous. Now, at the cusp of the new millennium, he feared he was witnessing a Nationalistic revival that would irretrievably set his country toward isolationism and conflict with the West ... and that was why his nights had become such restless ordeals, his brief intervals of sleep enmeshed in spidery nightmares from which he would awaken in a cold sweat, his mouth filled with the taste of dust and ashes.
On the television, Pedachenko had wrapped up his commentary at last. He folded his hands on his desk and leaned forward, smiling, his piercing blue eyes seeming to look directly at the viewer. “Now, friends, I invite you to phone the studio with your questions ...”
“No thank you, friend,” Starinov said. He thumbed the off button on his remote control and Pedachenko abruptly blinked into the void, his intrusive presence rejected—but that wasn’t quite true, now was it?
Unfortunately, Starinov thought, things were never that easy. For outside the walls of his office, from one end of the Federation to the next, Pedachenko was everywhere.
“You’re on the air.”
“Good evening, Minister Pedachenko. I would like your opinion of Minister Bashkir’s recent visit to China and his pledges of increased cooperation between our countries.”
“Thank you, caller. I think we must look at the minister’s intentions and specific agreements with China separately. In light of NATO enlargement and other recent efforts by the United States to monopolize world affairs, I would agree with him that we share many common interests with our Asian neighbor. American power is a menace that must be shackled, and to do it we have no choice but to turn eastward. But I believe Minister Bashkir was in foolish dereliction of duty when he announced plans to import Chinese technology and military products. Our own munitions plants, the best in the world, are suffering from decreased production orders. Furthermore, China has always been one of their largest customers. Why, then, should we reverse the arrangement now? It seems idiotic and misguided ...”
In his dacha northeast of Moscow, Leonid Todshivalin had been dozing off to the sound of the television when the crash of breaking glass startled him into full awareness. He jerked around in his reclining chair and saw that one of the back windows had been shattered. Cold wind swept into the living room through the jagged remnants of the pane. Spears of glass were sprayed across the rug beneath the sill. In a corner of the floor, he noticed a large rock lying amid the shards. A folded piece of paper had been bound to it with a rubber band.
Pulling his bathrobe closed around him, Todshivalin sprang off the chair and hurried over to the window. He knelt to pick up the stone, careful not to step in the glass, cocking an eye out the window at his snow-covered yard. He didn’t see anybody. But he thought he knew why the rock had been thrown.
He pulled off the rubber band and unfolded the slip of paper. Written on it in a large hand were two words:
BLOODSUCKING ASSHOLE
He felt a flash of anger. For two months his railroad had been relaying American grain deliveries bound from central warehouses in Moscow to the nearby western provinces. The amount shipped to each region was calculated according to population, and if not for his skimming off a portion of the reserves, his town’s allotment would have been negligible. He had assumed the risk. Why then did he not deserve to make a small profit by adding a surcharge to the grain he distributed?
“Ingrates!” he shouted, lobbing the rock back out at his unseen harassers. “You’ve had too much to drink! Go away!”
There was no answer. He rose, cursing under his breath, thinkin
g he had better clean up the mess. Somebody would pay for this. All he had wanted was to spend New Year’s Eve relaxing in peace and quiet. Somebody would pay.
Todshivalin was starting toward the closet to get his broom when he heard a loud bang at the door. He halted suddenly, then turned and looked out across the backyard again. There were several sets of overlapping footprints in the snow. Had they been there before? He wasn’t sure, and he supposed it really wasn’t important. What mattered was that they swung around to the front of the house.
There was another bang on the door. Another. He shot his gaze at it, saw the hinges quivering.
“Get out of here!” he shouted. “Get out before I call the polizei!”
The door thudded and shook. Its bolt lock racketed in its socket. A spear of wood splintered off the jamb.
Todshivalin heard the dry rasp of his own breath. Beads of sweat had formed on his nose and forehead. He felt the hair on his scalp bristle at the nubs.
More drumming crashes at the door.
He stood in the entry hall for several breathless seconds and then decided to get his rifle from his bedroom closet. He had to do it fast, before the door buckled.
He lunged toward the bedroom and reached the entrance just as the door burst open, shaves of wood flying from its frame. His eyes cut back to the front of the house. Three men in stocking masks came surging in. Two were holding metal pipes. The third had a jerry can in his hand.
“You’re all out of your minds!” Todshivalin screamed. “You can’t do this! You—”
One of the men thrust himself at Todshivalin and swung a pipe across his middle. He collapsed like a ruptured accordion, the air whooshing out of his lungs. Now both of the men with pipes were standing over him, pounding him with blows. He raised his hands to protect his face and one of the pipes smashed his fingers. He grunted in pain and curled up on his side, whimpering, tucking his hands between his thighs.
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