by Masha Dark
“Hi,” she said, switching to hand’s free. “I hope it’s something good.”
“Better – I’ve had enough shit for today,” responded Pavel. “I’ve got news from Krook. The victim was raped. To quote Krook: traces of ejaculate were found on the walls of the vagina …”
“Got it,” replied Marisa shortly.
“Where are you?” asked Pavel.
“In Fredhall,” Marisa informed him. “Somebody tore out the trachea of one of my informants last night.”
“I guess I spoke too soon about enough shit, huh?” said Volsky. “Are you coming in soon?”
It was then that Marisa saw the last – the lowest – line on the receipt. It was just one word, a surprisingly legible word boldly printed on the paper.
“Hello?” Pavel’s voice echoed in her earpiece. “Are you still there?”
Delivery was printed on the bottom of the receipt.
“Hello?” Volsky was beginning to sound worried.
“Everything’s okay,” responded Marisa. “I’ll be there soon.”
Both the detectives, in the meanwhile, had been following her movements attentively.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Marisa smiled wolfishly as she completed her phone call. “But I have no choice but to take this thing away with me.”
“And on what grounds?” asked Romano querulously.
“Jurisdiction,” snapped Marisa. “From this moment the murder investigation of Zemfira Nizametdinova is under the jurisdiction of the Coalition of Reinforced Unified Special Services. I hope you have no objections?”
Pleased with herself, Marisa headed for the exit.
Alexander Soigu had been sitting in his office reflecting on the tail they had set on him. He’d known he was being followed since yesterday evening. The boys in the ‘unmarked van’, which was parked directly opposite his mansion, had not noticed him last night. But he had noticed them: he had heard them. And when he had needed to, he had slipped right by them. Naturally, they were quite shocked this morning and hurried after him to his office. Right now Soigu could not clearly hear the thoughts of his watchers. They were too far away and there were too many obstacles between him and these bloodhounds. Nonetheless, Soigu did not doubt they were connected to the same department that had sent that pair to visit him yesterday morning – the boy and the girl, the one who had so inflamed him. He’d thought he could make do with Stella and his secretary, but it hadn’t been enough.
And now here he was, sitting and thinking – had he made a mistake last night? Perhaps it hadn’t been a good idea to rape that young girl? There were certainly meticulous experts among these daredevils who had already found everything they needed…. But even if they had, what of it? What did they have to compare the sample to? Everything was alright; everything was as it should be. Otherwise a man would have become his victim, and not a woman.
But the irritating presentiment of future annoyances did not disappear. Someone intended to gain access to his home.
Soigu picked up the phone and dialed his mansion. Stella answered, as always, with foolish breathiness. Had he really found that attractive once?
“It’s me,” he said, trying to suppress his growing rage. “How are things?”
“Normal,” said Stella. “What could happen here? When are you coming home?”
Soigu pretended that he had not heard her last question.
“You haven’t seen anything suspicious? Strangers on the grounds, perhaps?”
“Strangers?” Stella yawned into the receiver. “I guess there are. Or rather, were. The plumber came.”
“What plumber?” asked Soigu, sincerely shocked.
“Ah, I forgot to tell you – a pipe got clogged this morning. In the bathtub. Right after you left. It was so gross, all this dirty water flowing out, you can’t imagine how…”
“What plumber?” Soigu repeated harshly. “Where did he come from?”
“What do you mean where did he come from?”
Now it was Stella’s turn to be shocked.
“From our, um…”
She clearly could not find the right word.
“What is it called? You know, that group thing in our community?”
“What group?” roared Soigu.
“Don’t get so excited, he’s already gone. Why are you so upset?” Stella was bewildered. “Everything’s fine with your lawn; no one trampled it.”
“Don’t you even have one small, grey cell remaining in your head? Why did you let him in?” Soigu replied stormily.
“What was I supposed to do?” Stella erupted. “Watch as the whole house got flooded with shit?”
“Fool,” breathed Soigu with loathing. “What an idiot you are. You were born a fool, and a fool you’ll die.”
“What are you talking about, Alex?” gaped the woman. “After yesterday…I thought we’d made peace…”
“Made peace?” Soigu nearly broke into laughter. “No, I simply fucked you because I needed to get off.”
“You son of a bitch!” screamed Stella in reply and she hung up the phone.
Soigu felt an intense desire to break her neck. She was lucky she was far away from him right now. He clenched his fists to stop them from shaking. So those little boys had found a way to slither into his house, had they? They’d gone too far this time. Why should he restrain himself? He could burn out their pitiful little minds with the strength of his thoughts and turn their bodies into a sticky, undifferentiated mass with one blow…. The animal inside Soigu began to tear its way out.
“No!“ howled Soigu and he pounded his fist on the desk.
The desk split in two.
And then his secretary rushed into his office.
“What happened, Alex?”
The girl stopped short. She looked from the broken desk to her boss then back again.
“Go away, get out of here!” Soigu yelled at her.
The girl followed his order.
Soigu walked over to the window and looked down. So, those opportunists from special services were sitting in a peacock blue caravan. The beggars. A pair of brats that thought they were the center of the universe. Well alright, he would fix them. He’d even go so far as to play by their rules – by the rules of the human world. He was rather powerful in his human disguise too.
“All my muscles are sore and my ass is killing me,” complained Arvid.
He reached for his pack of cigarettes and found that it was empty.
“I don’t have any left either,” Genaro said, gesturing helplessly. “Go buy another pack, if it’s too much for you.”
“The hell with them,” said Arvid. “We’ll be healthier.”
They had been sitting in the car for more than an hour, only diverted by examining the signs and facades that were strewn all along the streets around the Stureplan. They had parked near the building that housed Alexander Soigu’s office; on the street level of this building there was a fashionable and sophisticated Japanese restaurant with the delightful, but alas completely unintelligible name, Mononoke.
“What does that mean?” asked Genaro, ogling the sign.
“Only the devil knows,” said Arvid sagely. “There was a cartoon called something similar – Princess Mononoke.”
“What was it about?” asked Genaro.
“Some gods,” Arvid contracted his brow. “There were all kinds of wolves, boars…. They battled against humans.”
“That’s strange. So why is the restaurant called that?” wondered Genaro.
“Only the devil knows,” repeated Arvid.
“So you watch cartoons, do you?” asked Genaro.
“Of course not. There’s this girl I know,” Arvid hurried to explain. “She’s a fan of all that Japanese anime. And of the director of this one…damn it, I forgot his name…”
“You know, I still haven’t ever tried this sushi stuff,” declared Genaro. “As far as I can tell, it’s just raw fish.”
He wrinkled up his nose.
“You don
’t know what you’re talking about,” objected Arvid. “Sushi is very tasty. It’s just expensive.”
“Hey, look over there,” Genaro said suddenly, turning his attention from the restaurant sign to the main entrance of the building.
Arvid looked where Genaro was pointing. Alexander Soigu was headed straight for them.
“Well, well, well. He seems to be on to us,” Arvid said.
“He’s a crafty son of a bitch,” Genaro said, nodding in agreement.
Soigu walked right up to the car and lightly tapped the tinted window with just the fingernail of his index finger. Arvid lowered the window.
“How can I help you?” he asked Soigu as if nothing was wrong.
“You can take your jalopy and fuck off,” he replied. “Or else I’ll bring such troubles down on your heads – on the heads of your entire gang – that you’ll…”
“You don’t say,” said Arvid, and then he clicked his tongue. “I wonder what these troubles might be. Surely you wouldn’t send your personal assassin after us?”
“I warned you,” snapped Soigu and he walked back to the building.
“Well, I guess it’s time to change up. We’ve been made,” said Arvid as he rolled up the window. “I guess we underestimated the old goat. Did you notice what he did?”
“You mean with his finger?” snorted Genaro. “Of course. He could have at least put on gloves, the louse.”
Once he returned to his office, Soigu finally felt better. The secretary was sitting in reception, pale and afraid to raise her eyes.
“I was just irritated,” Soigu said to her.
“Good,” babbled the girl. “That is, what I meant to say was, that’s too bad.”
He could hear her heart beating as it chased the surge of blood through her veins in mighty jerks. He thought of the girl from yesterday and how easy it would be just to…
“Order me a new desk,” commanded Soigu. “I’m going out on business. Cancel all my appointments for today.”
“Of course,” the girl nodded dutifully.
“Oh yes, and leave a message for Mikael Mikkelsen,” added Soigu. “Have him get in touch with me as soon as possible, I require his assistance.”
Mikael Mikkelsen was a politician who held a fairly high office and who was indebted to Soigu. It was time to remind him of his debt. If they wanted troubles, they’d get them.
Grinning spitefully, Soigu left the office.
3.
Heredis fletus sub persona risus est.
The weeping of an heir is laughter in disguise.
Dalana knew of countless ways to take a life. Complicated and simple. Cruel and merciful. Difficult and easy in execution. Most Begotten of Old could also take a life using another’s hands. Dalana knew how to do this, for she possessed the gift of suggestion. But marionettes – hypnotized humans – were only useful when a human life was on the line. It was very simple: a human killed a human. The order to kill was suggested to the murderer, and the victim could not preempt his unwilling executioner since he was unable to scan outside thoughts. But human puppets were of no use whatsoever in the destruction of a Begotten of Old. In that instance, she had to work with her own hands and her own mind. So right now Dalana was sitting inside the stolen Volvo two houses away from Soigu’s mansion scouring her mind for a method that would successfully kill the creature that passed for an influential businessman in the human world, with a mansion in Danderyd and all the other emblems of luxurious life according to Swedish standards.
Dalana was slightly amused by the news that the crusaders were interested in her target. It was a bit curious that fate persisted in bringing Dalana together with the agents of CRUSS ever since she had stepped from the gangway of the American plane onto Swedish soil. When she had discovered their van not far from Soigu’s residence this morning she had experienced a feeling of shock mixed with vexation, but this feeling soon grew into a mischievous mirth. Eventually Dalana tuned herself into the mental frequencies of the three crusaders and proceeded to soak up all the information they held in their heads relating to their common target.
The humans from the Coalition suspected Alexander Soigu in a series of animalistic murders, rumors of which had been chilling the souls of the inhabitants of this elite suburban neighborhood for over a year. And they were quite right to suspect him. Judging by his latest victim – a lone woman – Soigu had snuck out to kill as recently as the preceding night, moreover he did it right under the noses of the agents that had been assigned to watch him.
Dalana was not pleased that she had let this pass. But what could she do now? It was no use crying over spilt milk. Dalana spent that night in a rented room, having decided that early in the morning she would start shadowing Soigu. As a result, she fell out with Vasilisa, who was beginning to be tormented by hunger. But the creature who was lurking under Soigu’s mask had successfully satisfied his hunger.
What kind of animal are you? Dalana asked herself, trying to analyze and collate the scraps of information that she had managed to gather. But for now those scraps would not fall into place. There were definitely some pieces missing in the puzzle called Soigu. What did Dalana know about him besides the fact that he seemed to be Begotten of Old? He definitely could change his appearance. That meant he was a shapeshifter. Humans generally thought of shapeshifters as those comically misshapen freaks from second-rate monster movies who supposedly turned into giant wolves under the light of a full moon – werewolves. Shapeshifters were a far more serious matter than those silly monsters, and they could, at heart, take the form of any animal. Or any human. Moreover, this shapeshifter possessed such a powerful and bright consciousness that mental combat with him would inevitably end in Dalana’s death. He would simply burn her out from the inside. For another thing, the shapeshifter was married, clearly, in his human hypostasis, and he had a child. A son. A half-blood – Dalana did not doubt that Soigu’s wife was a human woman. And, finally, the shapeshifter Soigu consorted with the lesser demons of the Underworld. Those who called the Underworld home rarely visited the Middle World; it indicated that Soigu was very powerful, since he had dared to summon a demon such as the Sentinel into the world of humans.
The creature that protected Soigu’s home was more or less comprehensible: the amorphous, gelatinous brute imitated different parts of the terrain and feasted on the negative emotions of humans. It was comprehensible, but at the same time sinisterly poisonous. Even for Dalana. Currently the beast was mimicking a green lawn, covering the entire area that flanked the house.
Deprived of the opportunity of seeing the inside of the target’s house, Dalana surveyed it from the outside. Visually – with the aid of some equipment she’d bought yesterday and improvised means – as well as mentally. Alas, the minds of the wife and, more importantly, Soigu’s son were out of Dalana’s range. The distance, coupled with the stout walls of the mansion, hindered her. Only the Sentinel was accessible, and the ‘spies’ from CRUSS. She could reach a few of the tycoon’s servants as well, but their thoughts interested Dalana very little so she scarcely listened to them at all.
She was far more interested in the quartet of crusaders. Quite soon after Dalana’s arrival there were only three left; one had scurried off to headquarters to report on their nighttime failures and the most recent crime. An ambulance arrived a short while later to carry away the elderly woman who had stumbled upon the gnawed remains in the forest. She was having a heart attack.
Then Soigu departed for Stockholm. Remembering the incident in the restaurant, Dalana concealed herself. Two of the crusaders drove off after him, leaving their comrade in lordly solitude at the command center. An hour later reinforcement arrived in the form of another employee of the Coalition disguised as a plumber. He had to fix the obstruction that had been artificially induced the night before in the drainage system of the house and at the same time to place tiny bugs everywhere he could.
In the course of accomplishing his mission, the plumber-crusader inadvert
ently rendered Dalana an invaluable service. Stella Soigu herself opened the door for him, thus placing herself within the radius of influence of the Begotten of Old’s mind. Like a mighty bilge pump, Dalana sucked all the information she needed from the woman’s head in the blink of an eye. She found out about her heart’s desires and about her relationships with her son and husband. Dalana ‘saw’ the layout of the house through Stella’s eyes – from the placement of the rooms to the distance between the steps on the stairs that led to the second floor. By the time the pseudo-plumber and his partner inside the van became absorbed in listening in on their objective, Dalana already knew the entire house like the back of her own hand. This method of gathering information did not strain her resources at all. She started listening to the thoughts of the crusaders, as well as to what they were listening. Well, they weren’t so much listening as monitoring. Or perhaps eavesdropping was a better term. On the whole, Dalana found the whole thing quite amusing. Several times Dalana felt that she was crashing into something completely foreign in their thoughts. It was as if some third party was trying to wiggle in between Dalana and the two agents inside the van. She had her guesses as to who that might be and she thought they would soon be proven correct.
When there was a call from headquarters to the van, Dalana learned that a Coalition medical examiner had found traces of seminal fluid on the body of last night’s victim. That gave her pause. Apparently Soigu was so sure of his own power that he no longer bothered to control himself. Well then, she would try to turn that to her own advantage.
Even though Dalana was absorbed in the process of mental reconnaissance and acquisition of information about Soigu, she did not neglect the other matter that directly concerned the Coalition. She needed to get rid of the girl who proudly called herself Special Agent Sukhostat as soon as possible. Dalana intended to carry out that task tomorrow. To that end she had drawn certain information from that fortuneteller before she died – information that would help her carry out this task without risking herself. Unfortunately for the young agent, but fortunately for Dalana, she had found another link that would make her plan near foolproof. To put it more precisely, one of those boys in the van was going to be her messenger after she gave him a certain ‘mental treatment’. She felt out each of the agents and decided in favor of an ungainly individual who resembled a grotesque insect. The puny little agent was called Bumblebee, but in Dalana’s opinion he looked more like a praying mantis. Naturally, he was macho in a way that betrayed deep insecurity. It wouldn’t be especially difficult for Dalana to command him to do what she wanted. The man wasn’t stupid, but he was exceedingly impulsive and impressionable. The minds of impetuous humans were equally as pliant and flexible as those of imbeciles. Now all Dalana had to do was stay patient and wait for Marisa Sukhostat to swallow the bait. Theoretically, the mantis’ malleability would enable Dalana to suggest murder to the boy, but Dalana seriously doubted that this egghead had the strength to overwhelm Marisa. No, Dalana would implement the main event in a different way. All that Bumblebee had to do was satisfy a single – one might even say completely innocent – request.