Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 56
Steen stared at Logan. “I will think about it,” he said finally. “Perhaps. Still I don’t think I should have to pay more, but perhaps. I will come to the office in the morning and let you know.”
“Fine,” Logan said. “I’m sure we can work out something reasonable.”
Thinking: you son of a bitch. You smug rich son of a bitch with your Goddamned fancy camera that someone needs to shove up your ass and your God-damned fancy watch after it. But he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets and kept walking, holding it in. The customer is always right.
A couple of hours later they came out onto a broad clear area at the top of a hill, where a short stocky man stood beside a big Mi-2 helicopter. He had a Kalashnikov rifle slung over his back.
“Logan,” he called, and raised a hand. “Zdrast’ye.”
“Misha,” Logan said. “Anything happening?”
“Nothing here. Just waiting for you, freezing my ass. Where is all this great warming I hear about?”
“Bullshit. Ten years ago, this time of year, you really would have been freezing your ass out here. You’d have been up to it in snow.”
“Don’t mind me, I’m just bitching,” Misha said in English, and then, switching back to Russian, “How did it go? Did he get his tiger?”
Logan nodded, watching Steen climbing aboard the helicopter. Yura was standing nearby, having a lengthy pee against a tree. “So soon?” Misha said. “Bozhe moi, that was quick.”
“Too quick.” Steen was inside now and Logan didn’t think he could hear them but he didn’t really care anymore. He told Misha what had happened. “Don’t laugh,” he added quickly, seeing Steen watching them out a cabin window. “He’s not very happy just now. Doesn’t feel he got his money’s worth.”
“Shto za chort? What did he expect, tigers in a chorus line singing show tunes?” He glanced around. “What happened to the pig?”
“I had Yura kill it. Too much trouble dragging it all the way back here, and I couldn’t very well leave the poor bastard tied there waiting for the wolves.”
“Too bad. We could have taken it to Katya’s, got her to roast it for us.”
He unslung the Kalashnikov and handed it to Logan. “Take charge of this thing, please, and I’ll see if I can get this old Mil to carry us home one more time.”
“So,” Misha said, “you think it was the same one? The big one, from last fall?”
“I think so,” Logan said, pouring himself another drink. “Of course there’s no way to know for sure, but the location’s right and I can’t imagine two males that big working that near to each other’s territory.”
It was late evening and they were sitting at a table in Katya’s place in Khabarovsk. The room was crowded and noisy and the air was dense with tobacco smoke, but they had a place back in a corner away from the worst of it. There was a liter of vodka on the table between them. Or rather there was a bottle that had once contained a liter of vodka, its contents now substantially reduced.
“In fact,” Logan went on, “it’s hard for me to imagine two males that big, period. If it’s not the same one, if they’re all getting that big, then I’m going to start charging more for screwing around with them.”
Misha said, “This is good for us, you know. If we know we can find a big fine-looking cat like that, we’ll get some business.”
He scowled suddenly. “If some bastard doesn’t shoot him. A skin that big would bring real money.”
“The market’s just about dried up,” Logan said. “The Chinese have too many problems of their own to have much interest in pretty furs—drought and dust storms, half the country trying to turn into Mongolia—and the rich old men who thought extract of tiger dick would help them get it up again are too busy trying to hang onto what they’ve got. Or get out.”
“All this is true.” Misha nodded, his eyes slightly owlish; he had had quite a few by now. “But you know there are still those who have what it takes to get what they want. There always will be, in China or Russia or anywhere else.” He grinned crookedly. “And a good thing for us, da?”
Logan took a drink and made a grimace of agreement. Misha was right; their most lucrative line of business depended on certain people being able to get what they wanted. Between the restrictions on aviation—Russia might be one of the few countries actually benefiting from atmospheric warming, but enough was enough—and those on travel within what was supposed to be a protected wilderness area, it was theoretically all but impossible to charter a private flight into the Sikhote-Alin country. There were, however, certain obviously necessary exceptions.
Logan said, “Come now, Misha. You know perfectly well all our clients are fully accredited scientific persons on essential scientific missions. It says so in their papers.”
“Konyechno. I had forgotten. Ah, Russia, Russia.” Misha drained his own glass and poured himself another one. “All those years we were poor, so we became corrupt. Now we are the richest country in the world, but the corruption remains. What is that English idiom? ‘Force of hobbit.’ ”
“Habit.”
“Oh, yes. Why do I always—”
He stopped, looking up at the man who was walking toward their table. “Govno. Look who comes.”
Yevgeny Lavrushin, tall and skinny and beaky of nose, worked his way through the crowd, the tails of his long leather coat flapping about his denim-clad legs. He stopped beside their table and stuck out a hand toward Logan. “Say hey,” he said. “Logan, my man. What’s happening?”
He spoke English with a curious mixed accent, more Brooklyn than Russian. He had driven a cab in New York for a dozen years before the United States, in its rising mood of xenophobia, decided to terminate nearly all green cards. Now he lived here in Khabarovsk and ran a small fleet of trucks, doing just enough legitimate hauling to cover for his real enterprises. He was reputed to have mafia connections, but probably nothing very heavy.
Logan ignored the hand. “Yevgeny,” he said in no particular tone. “Something on your mind?”
“What the hell “Yevgeny said. “You gonna ask me to sit down?”
“No,” Logan said. “What did you want?”
Yevgeny glanced theatrically around and then leaned forward and put his hands on the table. “Got a business proposition for you,” he said in a lowered voice. “Serious money—”
“No,” Logan said again, and then, more sharply as Yevgeny started to speak, “No, God damn it. Nyet. Whatever it is, we’re not interested.”
“Besides,” Misha said in Russian, “since when do your usual customers travel by air? Did they get tired of being crammed like herring into the backs of your trucks?”
Yevgeny’s coat collar jerked upward on his neck. “Christ, don’t talk that shit. . . .” He glanced around again. “Look, it’s not Chinks, okay? Well, yeah, in a way it is, but—”
“Yevgeny,” Logan said, “it’s been a hell of a long day. Go away.”
“Hey, I can dig it. I’m gone.” He started to move away and then turned back, to lean over the table again. “One other thing. You guys know where there’s some big tigers, right? If you ever need to make some quick money, I know where you can get a hell of a good price for a clean skin—”
Logan started to stand up. “Okay, okay.” Yevgeny held up both hands and began backing away. “Be cool, man. If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
“Yeah,” Logan muttered as he disappeared into the crowd. “Just start turning over rocks . . . hand me the bottle, Misha, I need another one now.”
“Wonder what he wanted,” Misha mused. “As far as I know, his main business is running Chinese illegals. You suppose he’s branched out into drugs or something?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Logan finished pouring and looked around for the cap to the vodka bottle. “I don’t even want to know . . . well, this has to be my last one. Have to deal with Steen tomorrow,” he said, screwing the cap down tightly, “and I definitely don’t want to do that with a hangover.”
But Steen didn’t show up the following morning.
“He hasn’t been here,” Lida Shaposhnikova told Logan when he came in. “I came in early, about eight-thirty, so I could have his account ready, and he never showed up.”
Logan checked his watch. “It’s not even ten yet. He probably slept late or something. We’ll wait.”
The office occupied the front room of a run-down little frame house on the outskirts of Khabarovsk, not far from the airport. The office staff consisted entirely of Lida. The back rooms were mostly full of outdoor gear and supplies—camping kit, camouflage fabric for blinds, night-vision equipment, and so on—and various mysterious components with which Misha somehow managed to keep the old helicopter flying. The kitchen was still a kitchen. Logan went back and poured himself a cup of coffee and took it to his desk and sat down to wait, while Lida returned to whatever she was doing on her computer.
But a couple of hours later, with noon approaching and still no sign of Steen, Logan said, “Maybe you should give him a call. Ask him when he’s planning to come.”
He got up and walked out onto the front porch for a bit of fresh air. When he went back inside, Lida said, “I phoned his hotel. He checked out this morning at nine.”
“Shit. You better call—”
“I already did.” Lida leaned back in her chair and looked at him with dark oblong eyes, a legacy from her Korean grandmother. “He left on the morning flight to Novosibirsk.”
“Son of a bitch,” Logan said in English.
“So it would seem,” Lida said in the same language.
“Well.” Logan rubbed his chin. “Well, go ahead and figure up his bill and charge him. You’ve already got his credit card number, from when he paid his deposit.”
Lida nodded and turned to the computer. A few minutes later she muttered something under her breath and began tapping keys rapidly, as the front door opened and Misha came in.
“Sukin syn,” he said when Logan told him what was going on. “He’s run out on us?”
“It’s all right,” Logan said. He nodded toward the front desk, where Lida was now talking to someone on the phone. “We’ll just charge it to his credit—”
“No we won’t.” Lida put down the phone and turned around. “The credit card’s no good. He’s canceled it.”
“He can do that?” Misha said. “Just like that?”
“He did it yesterday,” Lida said. “He paid his bill at the hotel with a check.”
Everyone said bad words in several languages. Misha said, “He can’t get away with that, can he?”
“Legally, no. In the real world—” Logan shrugged heavily. “He’s got to be connected. You know how hard it is to do anything to someone who’s connected. We can try, but I don’t think much of our chances.”
“At the very best,” Lida said, “it’s going to take a long time. Which we don’t have.” She waved a hand at the computer. “I’ve been looking at the numbers. They’re not good.”
“Got some more costs coming up, too,” Misha put in. “We’re overdue on our fuel bill at the airport, and the inspector wants to know why he hasn’t gotten his annual present yet. I was just coming to tell you.”
“Hell.” Logan felt like kicking something. Or someone. “I was counting on that money to get us off the hook. Well, I’ll just have to get busy and find us another job.”
There was a short silence. Logan and Misha looked at each other.
Misha said, “We could—”
“No we couldn’t,” Logan said.
But of course they were going to.
Yevgeny said, “Like I tried to tell you before, it’s not Chinks. I mean, it’s Chinamen, but it’s not your regular coolies coming north looking for work and a square meal. These are high-class Chinamen, you know? Some kind of suits. The kind you don’t just cram into the back of a truck behind a load of potatoes.”
“Sounds political,” Logan said. “No way in hell, if it is.”
“No, no, nothing like that. This is—” Yevgeny hunched his bony shoulders. “I’ll be straight with you guys, I don’t really know what the fuck it’s all about, but it can’t be political. The people who want it done, that’s just not their thing.”
Which meant mafia, which meant Yevgeny was blowing a certain amount of smoke, because in Russia nowadays the concepts of mafia and political were not separable. This was starting to feel even worse.
Misha said, “I’ll tell you right now, I’m not flying into Chinese airspace. Money’s no good to a man with a heat-seeking missile up his ass.”
“That’s okay. See, there’s this island in the river—”
“The Ussuri?” Logan said skeptically. The Ussuri islands were military and heavily fortified; there had been some border incidents with the Chinese.
“No, man, the Amur. Way to hell west of here, I’ll show you on the map, they gave me the coordinates and everything. It’s just a little island, not much more than a big sandbar. On the Russian side of the channel, but nobody gives a shit either way, there’s nothing much around there, not even any real roads.”
His fingers made diagrams on the tabletop. “You guys set down there, there’ll be a boat from the Chinese side. Five Chinamen get out, you pick them up and you’re outta there. You drop them off at this point on the main highway, out in the middle of nowhere. There’ll be some people waiting.”
“Sounds like they’ve got this all worked out,” Logan said. “So why do they need us? I’d expect people like that to have their own aircraft.”
“They did. They had this chopper lined up for the job, only the pilot made some kind of mistake on the way here and spread himself all over this field near Blagoveshchensk. So they got hold of me and asked could I line up somebody local.”
“Yevgeny,” Logan said, “if this goes wrong you better hope I don’t make it back, because I’m going to be looking for you.”
“If this goes wrong, you won’t be the only one. These people,” Yevgeny said very seriously, “they’re not people you want to fuck with. Know what I’m saying?”
Lida said, “I wish I knew what you’re getting mixed up in. Or perhaps I don’t. It doesn’t matter. You’re not going to tell me, are you?”
“Mhmph,” Logan replied, or sounds to that effect. His face was partly buried in his pillow. He was about half asleep and trying to do something about the other half if only Lida would quit talking.
“I talk with Katya, you know,” she went on. “We’ve known each other for years. She’s seen you with Yevgeny Lavrushin.”
Logan rolled onto his back, looking up into the darkness of the bedroom. “It’s nothing. Just a quick little flying job.”
“Of course. A quick little flying job for which you will be paid enough to get the company out of debt. You can’t help being a fool,” she said, “but I wish you wouldn’t take me for one.”
She moved closer and put out a hand to stroke his chest. “Look at us. You need me more than you love me. I love you more than I need you. Somehow it works out,” she said. “I’m not complaining. Only don’t lie to me.”
There was nothing to say to that.
“So,” she said, “at least tell me when this is to happen.”
“Tomorrow night. Wha—” he said as her hand moved lower.
“Then I’d better get some use out of you,” she said, “before you get yourself killed or imprisoned.”
“Lida,” he protested, “I’m really tired.”
She slid a long smooth leg over him and moved it slowly up and down his body. “No you’re not. Maybe you think you are, but you’re not. Not yet. See there,” she said, rising up, straddling him, fitting herself to him, “you’re not tired at all.”
Logan’s watch said it was almost one in the morning. He shivered slightly as a chilly breeze came in off the river.
Not too many years ago, at this time of year, the river would have carried big floes of ice from the spring thaw; but now there was only the smooth dark water sliding past in the dim light of a low crescent moon, and, away beyond that, a dark smudge that was the distant China shore.
The island was about half a mile long and maybe fifty or sixty feet across. As Yevgeny had said, it wasn’t much more than a big sandbar. The upstream end was Uttered with brush and washed-up dead trees, but the other end was clear and open and flat in the middle, with plenty of room for the Mil.
He dropped his hand to the butt of the Kalashnikov and hefted it slightly, easing the pressure of the sling against his shoulder. Beside him, Misha squatted on the sand, his face grotesquely masked by bulky night goggles. “Nothing yet,” Misha said.
“It’s not quite time.”
“I know. I just don’t like this waiting.”
Logan knew what was eating Misha. He hadn’t wanted to shut down the Mil’s engines; he’d wanted to be ready to take off fast if anything went wrong. But it wouldn’t have done any good; as Logan had already pointed out, with those twin Isotov turbines idling they’d never hear a border patrol unit approaching until it was too late to run for it, and, after all, where would they run to?
Somewhere on the Russian side of the river a wolf howled, and was joined by others. Standing in the shadows nearby, Yura said something in a language that wasn’t Russian, and chuckled softly.
“Wolves all over the place these days,” Misha said. “More than I’ve ever seen before. I wonder what they’re eating. I know, the deer population is up, but I wouldn’t think that would be enough.”
“It’s been enough for the tigers,” Logan pointed out.
“True . . . speaking of tigers,” Misha said, “I’ve been thinking. Maybe we ought to start giving that big male some special attention, you know? Take a pig or a sheep or something down there every now and then, get him used to visiting that clearing. A tiger that size, he’s money in the bank for us if we can count on him showing up for the clients.”
“Hm. Not a bad idea.”
“Have Yura put out some of his secret tiger bait powder.” Misha dropped his voice. “You think that stuff really works?”
