Republic of Infidels I – The Remains – Chapter 4: The Prodigal

Alec sipped from his water glass as he watched Callow International playing on the TV mounted over the head of the old nonna who operated the little bistro. The closed captions were in Italian, but he was more interested in Vikram’s unadulterated performance. He’d never met the man, but he was intrigued to see the ways in which he was like, and unlike, Rachel.

One very key difference was his natural ability to be seen. He had a talent for commanding respect that he seemingly took for granted, and Alec could tell the lauded news anchor was beguiled in spite of himself. Alec could relate, but he preferred the more subdued assertiveness of Vikram’s sister.

He twisted his glass around, then switched to poking the ice with his straw. He was nervous, but in a way that pleased him. He’d been circling Rachel Kori since he’d first caught her eye during their first year orientation. She had been sixteen, he seventeen, both of them early to this famous institution. Then she had disappeared almost completely out of his view, accelerating through a triple course-load without breaking a sweat. 

When he found her name on the instructor list for that term, he convinced the Fine Arts department to parachute him into her anatomy courses, ostensibly so he could improve in the classical fashion. That was rank nonsense, of course, as he needed no such instruction. It clearly annoyed his professoressa to no end the way he scraped by and still somehow managed to secure a place in her other two courses. 

“You know I can’t date students,” she’d said crisply the first time he’d asked. 

“If I drop out, will you change your mind?”

“Probably not.”

“Well, I may as well continue, and learn something.”

She was lonely, and it was lovely to him. The stern mask she wore in class by rights belonged to someone three times her age. It was purpose-made to intimidate the other young men in her classes, but Alec had the necessary gifts to see where it wore thin. He craved those moments when she was at her least wry, when she explained a bone structure or an aortic valve with such obvious pleasure that it made her students, including him, feel the same admiration. It was this passion in her own exhaustive knowledge that made him hungry. 

Fine said the text message, a full twenty-four hours after the final class had ended. Where?

Tonight, he texted back. Then sent her the address of this little out-of-the-way bistro. It was nearly always empty, though Alec happened to know the baked goods they shipped out each morning netted the owners a tidy profit because the nonna liked to brag about it. 

“Is that her?” she asked in Italian, polishing the counter with unwonted slowness. 

Alec turned his head. Rachel, hunched up in an Oxford hoodie and looking far more like a student than a professor of anatomy, shouldered her way through the door with a jangle of bells. Her black hair had frizzed slightly from the damp, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup. She looked like she’d just rolled out of bed. Her expression dared him to just try and open his mouth about it.

“Bella ragazza,” said the nonna. “Marry that one.”

Rachel’s whole expression tugged upward by the eyebrows. Alec felt the colour flood into his face. Without missing a beat, Rachel stared at the old nonna. The old woman, suddenly feeling the force of Rachel’s black eyes, hurried off to find something else to occupy her attention.

Alec slipped off the stool and indicated a table in the corner next to the fogged window. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

“Neither did I,” she growled, then looked at his flushed face, and broke into a grin, colouring a little herself.

“Where did you learn Italian?” he demanded, annoyed that he should have been deprived of this detail. 

“Fellini. Antonini. I don’t really speak it, but I understand enough.”

“Then shall I teach you more?” he offered, trying to find his charm again. 

“Get us something to go,” she said. “Let’s walk.” 

When they were out in the narrow street, Rachel condescended to stay close to his side, her eyes moving over their surroundings.

“Walk me back to my office,” she said. “Don’t worry, it’s a long walk.”

They talked about anatomy at first. He could tell she was holding back, trying not to overwhelm him with her encyclopaedic knowledge on the subject of the human body. He could see why it was so interesting to her. She needed the complexity to feed the hungry furnace of her mind.

It was in such a spirit that she absorbed his discussions about art. How he had been a child prodigy of his own kind, how his parents had originally discouraged him from seeking a career in art, concerned he couldn’t make a living at it. He’d done concept art for films at the age of twelve under a pseudonym and had made good money, proving to them that he had a future in it. 

“It must help, to be in Italy,” Rachel observed. “Surrounded by all of that tradition.”

“I’d like to take you to Florence,” he said. “If you haven’t been.”

“No,” she admitted, and then looked down, trying to hide a small smile. “I haven’t, not yet.”

I’d like to take you to bed, he wanted to say. I want to paint you cool eyed, skin gleaming, with that smile on your lips like one of Sargent’s women. 

They reached the department entrance. She turned to him, intending to say goodbye, but he could see the way her eyes moved over the nearly empty quad.

“Are you worried we’ll be seen?” Alec wondered with a frisson of irritation. “Why?”

“I’m not,” she said, and then a sudden wave of nervousness seemed to hit her. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “God, I’m the one… I’m sure you know by now that I’m an idiot.”

“Alec, you knew exactly what you were doing,” she said, exasperated, but not only with him, but—as it seemed to him—with herself.

“When do you leave for the holiday?” he demanded, suddenly angry that she should be so frightened of him. Or was it fear? He wasn’t sure. Her uncertainty seemed to come from nowhere. 

She frowned at him. “The day after tomorrow.” 

“After the staff party.”

“Invitation only,” she pointed out, though she knew full well it was a detail and that it was unlikely to stop him. He had a rising star of his own, and he was good at talking himself into rooms. 

He looked her right in the eyes, then took her hand. When she didn’t withdraw it, he bent and kissed it quickly, but not so quickly that he failed to breathe in the scent of her, to let the tip of his nose touch her fine sharp knuckles. He tried to put as much sensuality into the gesture as he could. 

When he looked up, he could see the flush under her dark complexion, the slight parting of lips. Then it occurred to him. She wasn’t scared of him, or his advances. She was scared of her own desire. Paralyzed by it. He wanted to reassure her that she was safe with him, that he loved her. Loved her authority, loved the girl in her. Loved the exactness of her gestures, and the softness of her frown on those rare occasions she was out of her reckoning. 

Alec didn’t say any of these things. Instead, he gave her hand a little squeeze, and his warmest smile. He was just happy to see her face and he wanted her to know it. She managed a little squeeze back, then a small smile. Then she disappeared into the fortress of the anatomy department, leaving him alone on the threshold.

“Is that the one?” 

From his seat by the fire, Jamal Salim used his whisky on the rocks to indicate something on the other side of the hall. Rachel checked surreptitiously to see what he was looking at, then turned her head back. Alec, as he’d tacitly promised, had managed his way into the department soiree. He wore a charcoal blazer and merlot-coloured shirt, just this side of black. He looked good, at ease as he chatted up the don’s secretary. He’d even tied back his curls. All he needed was a ribbon to complete the slightly foppish effect.

“Oh, he is pretty,” Salim remarked with a grin. “Well done.”

Affronted, Rachel turned to deliver a rebuke, but seeing the state of her old teacher, she couldn’t find her voice. He was so thin, so pale, his Arab complexion waxy and sallow around the edges. He had to navigate his whisky around the oxygen tube that ran up from the tank, and terminated in his nostrils. 

“You shouldn’t be drinking,” Rachel said automatically. 

Looking at him, she might have thought he’d aged forty years. She wanted to cry, but she also didn’t want to ruin the mascara she’d carefully applied earlier. They’d developed more than just a rapport over the nine years during which he’d schooled her, guided her, and organized her education so that she would neither be stunted nor alienated. She’d been there when he’d buried his wife, and also when he’d married again, this time to a man he’d loved in his youth. She’d been there when that man too had died, leaving Salim little to live for except his star pupil.

It was after the death of Gideon, when Rachel had completed the first year of university, that their relationship permanently changed. No longer under his immediate supervision, Salim had gradually become a real friend. The kind that had no problem with making such intimate observations as the one he made now—

“You, my dear, are severely underfucked.”

Now Rachel did rebuke him. “Jamal!”

Salim took another drink. “Oh, look, he’s disappeared.”

Rachel stood up and snatched the Glenfiddich from him, then took a bottle of water from the table and put it into his hand. 

“I’m coming back,” she warned him. 

“Don’t,” he advised. “Go. I want you to go ruin that young man’s life. I’m a dying man, I should get what I want.”

Rachel rolled her eyes, blowing out her cheeks. Taking the drink with her, she stepped into the ladies to check and make sure she hadn’t melted into a Dali clockwork. She looked good in the little black dress. It hugged her curves but left enough to the imagination to call itself casual, but it wasn’t enough to endow her with confidence.

She’d originally intended to return to Salim and damn Alec to having to wait for his chance, but Salim was now occupied with one of his colleagues. Rachel shrugged her shoulders, drank off the rest of the whisky and left the glass by the bar. She scanned the low medieval room, but couldn’t see Alec anywhere.

Outside, it was cool for the season, the clouds just clearing after a brief shower. The grass in the quad shone in the dim moonlight, but there was no one in sight. Rachel took a breath, about to turn around —

“Jesus,” she snapped as Alec grinned at her from the top of the short run of stairs. His suit jacket blended him into the old stone. It was like watching a chameleon move away from its background as he descended. 

“I was talking to your adviser,” he said. “He said you were looking for me.”

“Did he,” Rachel groused, entertaining the idea that she would get revenge on Salim, pretending she didn’t know that game was no longer in play. 

“He cares for you very much,” Alec observed as he moved in close, too close, now becoming more of a sensory experience than he had been the day before. He smelled clean, with just a trace of aftershave. 

“Yes,” she conceded. “He’s been minding my business since I was ten. What did he tell you?”

Alec shrugged. “Perhaps it was in confidence.”

“Alec,” she pressed, annoyed.

“Oh, I like that,” he said, now grinning again. “When you say my name like that, it’s like we’ve been together for years.”

“You,” she snapped. “Are so unbelievably transparent, so… so…”

He tilted his head, trying both to understand and to tease her. Rachel did the only thing that seemed correct. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. His mouth was soft and flavoured with lime and gin. He had no time to be stunned, and recovered remarkably quickly, opening his mouth to hers, inviting her to decide the extent of how deep this kiss—her first—would go. 

She was tentative at first, exploring the strange, interesting texture of his tongue, the taste of him, juniper and salt, and citrus. When she pulled back, finally looked up into his large hazel eyes, his smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. 

“What?” she demanded, suddenly worried that she had done something wrong.

“Is that why you’ve been so… ” he searched for the word and apparently couldn’t find it. “Because you’ve never… ”

She felt her face burn. She took a step back, but he caught her elbow, pulled her in, took her face in his hands as he kissed her with full tongue, drowning her mouth in the strange liquid sensation, opening an expressway through her nervous system from her lips directly to the juncture of her thighs. 

They half staggered, half stumbled into the shadow of one of the great cornerstones. Alec was hesitant at first, but she pulled his hands to her body. After that he pressed her back against the stone, whispering in Italian against her skin as he kissed her neck, palmed one of her breasts. 

Rachel could feel him hard, straining against the front of his slacks, and she wanted nothing more than to take back to her flat and acquaint herself with his naked body. It hurt, the ache inside her, all the more because she knew—as the great clock in the middle of the quad began to chime—that she absolutely could not. 

Gently, Rachel pushed him away. His eyes glittered as he looked at her, his mouth and neck flushed visibly pink even in the dark. She wanted so much to unbutton his shirt, to see how far down his throat and chest that flush went, but she held back. 

“I want to,” she said, hating the desperation in her voice, but wanting him to understand how true it was.

To her surprise, and to her immense relief, Alec nodded. “Your adviser.”

“He won’t be here when I return.” She felt tears start to well up, knew they would track black down her cheeks, but couldn’t help it. 

Gently, he thumbed her tears away before they could fall, ignoring the fact that he was getting mascara under his thumbnails. 

“I’ll be here when you get back, Rachel,” he said, kissing her again with fevered lips. “Go be with your friend. I’ll see you when term starts.”

“What if you meet a nice girl?” she wondered, half-joking.

Alec looked straight at her, grinned his lopsided, Dionysian grin. “What would I want with a nice girl?”

“This is a test, Sergei Mikhailovich,” the old apparatchik said, his voice slightly raised over the music. “If you fail, you won’t walk away.”

Sergei wasn’t really paying attention. He was looking in the cracked mirror, watching himself disappear as the men’s room light flickered in time with the throbbing music outside. At twenty-two, Sergei was in the best physical shape of his life, a strapping two hundred pounds of muscle, all of it flattered by an expensive black shirt, and even more expensive designer jeans.

“Are you listening to me?”

Sergei ran a hand through his ice blonde hair, admiring the way the high fade emphasized his sculpted features, his pale blue eyes turning black every time the lamp failed. He smiled at himself. He felt like he was vibrating, a side effect of the cocaine he’d done in his car a twenty minutes before. He was pleased to find that there was no outward evidence to show this. His employers, the apparatchik informed him, did not like drugs. A Vor should be above such indulgences. 

In Sergei’s carceral circle, the pale shadow of the criminal nation that had once pulled the strings of the marionette of state was mockingly referred to as the New Vory, but he suspected his babysitter was well aware of that. Still, they’d invested in him, so Sergei was willing to be patient. He was ready to see if they had more to offer. 

The coke was starting to wear off, but he still felt a little of the shine, that vague sense of feeling that, for a time, covered the near total lack of it. He could and often did feel things like lust, passion, rage, and other emotional reactions that happened in the moment. More complex sympathetic emotions were beyond him except on the rare, brief occasion he bothered to use an intoxicant. Even then, the effect was shallow and brief, providing him with a false sense of progression that disintegrated on contact.

As time had passed, the nature of his preferred intoxicant became more existential than anything he could put into his body. Soon, he reassured himself. Soon he would bask in her disdain. For one stinging moment, he would be able to touch insight, to borrow her perception. Rachel’s hatred of him was pure. The high was incomparable.

He shelved these thoughts, withdrawing from his contemplation. The men around him were also in various stages of inebriation, but they lacked his constitution. Some of them pissed with their faces against the wall, others vomiting up a months’ wages in caviar and gold leaf. The Vory apparatchik wrinkled his nose. 

“I’m ready,” Sergei told him.

The man was slightly shorter than him, but he was a formidable old soldier, hard as iron. He believed in God, and he feared no one else. “Remember,” he warned, bending down to wash his hands. “We chose you. No mistakes.”

Sergei sniffed, brushing a knuckle against his nose. “Fine.”

He walked out on the dance floor, the music beat throbbing low as the crowd swayed, grinding and groping. He could feel the heat of them, one living mass made up of shiny, glittering fabric and exposed skin, parting organically as he walked through. 

Far from being disturbed by the crush of humanity, the smell of it got his blood up. Hands, slender and female—and some male—dragged themselves across him. He was tempted to accept the invitation, to catch one of them, to drag its owner out of the crowd into a dark corner where he could indulge himself. Another time, perhaps.

As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he cast around and quickly found what he was looking for. Damir Malenkov was no longer so large as he had been when they were kids. His expensive haircut did not completely hide the dent that the 12-year-old Sergei had given him with the length of rebar. He wasn’t an ugly man, just a nothing man. A crooked cop selling confiscated drugs and flashing the money around to impress a girl. That was why the Vory wanted him. They didn’t know about the history between Damir and Sergei, and Sergei had not troubled to enlighten them. He didn’t want to be reassigned. It was too delicious.

He mentally reviewed his short brief as he neared the table. The girl seated across from Damir was, like Rachel, of mixed Indian and Russian descent. Like Rachel, she was beautiful, though in markedly different ways. She seemed only slightly interested in whatever Damir was shouting at her over the din. After a few moments, he got up, evidently intent on fording the glittering flood of humanity to get to the bar. 

Sergei didn’t plan it. His body just told him to move, so he moved. He went over to the table, put his elbows on it and leaned towards her. Her eyes measured him. Her familiar bored expression thrilled him, though she was kittenish where Rachel was patrician. She was curved and soft under the tight red velvet dress, enticing even in her graceless slouch. No wonder Damir had lost his dented head.

“You look like a girl I’m in love with,” Sergei told her. It wasn’t completely true. Rachel never looked at him except down her nose. This one appraised him, dark eyes moving over the hard lines of his exemplary physique, calculating a new trajectory for her evening.

“I’m here with someone,” she said. 

His smile was brief and insincere. “Yes, Damir. I saw. He went to get drinks?”

Her eyes narrowed. “How do you know Damir?”

Sergei ignored the question, but instead pretended to be scanning the crowd. “I don’t see him. I’m going to go have a cigarette. Will you tell him I’m waiting out back for him?”

She frowned. “Who—”

“Just tell him it’s a friend of his.” He put a finger to his lips. “Don’t describe me, I want to surprise him.” 

She looked hard at him, then sat back. “Fine.” 

“Thank you…” he left a space for her to supply a name, though he knew it already.

She tilted her head. “Lydia.”

“Lydia,” he repeated slowly, adding breath to the syllables the way he might say her name in the dark, with his hands on her. She licked her lips as though they were dry and not layered in cherry gloss he could smell a mile away.

He grinned. “I’ll see you soon.”

She frowned at him, no doubt confused by the conflict in his stated intentions. He left her that way, moving back through the crowd to take up his post behind the speaker bank. 

It was eerily quiet, the sound shadow protected from the heavy directional output of the thrumming speakers. He couldn’t see the table from here, but Lydia must have done as he’d asked, because Damir wandered unsteadily by him, drunkenly searching for the exit. 

“Wrong way,” Sergei said, his voice perfectly audible. 

Damir’s face turned to him, pale in the dark, taut with perplexity. It was the same face that had loomed over him, laughing as he’d delivered each blow. Sergei was too small to match him in a contest of strength, but he was faster and better prepared. The length of rebar was exactly where he’d left it behind the groundskeeper’s shed. He’d intended to kill the bigger bully outright, but he was caught before he could finish the job. Still, he’d been satisfied with his efforts. The resulting coma had prevented his victim from testifying for several months, during which Sergei’s father had managed to arrange his son’s sentence to be served during the winter months. Sergei was released every summer from the Siberian juvenile facility at Taymylyr. 

 He held no resentment towards Damir for this. In fact, Sergei had all but forgotten about him. It was sheer dumb luck that the poor bastard was unknowingly reselling Vory product. He wouldn’t have dared otherwise. Not even the most bent police officer would knowingly cross the Vory, reduced stature or no. That Sergei himself, soon a Vor initiate, would get to finish the job he’d started — well, that was frosting. 

Damir took a bleary instant to recognize Sergei, which wasn’t surprising given it was dark and they’d last seen each other as children. As the beat picked up, a strobe light began to pulse, illuminating everything—including Sergei—in jerky high relief.

Horrified recognition bloomed on Damir’s moon face. He tried to get away, but Sergei caught him, secured one arm around his neck and dragged him back behind the speakers. He struggled uselessly while Sergei amused himself by letting him, playing the weaker man back and forth like a sport fish. He locked his arm around Damir’s throat, flexing his ham-sized bicep to apply a blood choke. Damir’s attempts to escape subsided. He went limp as he lost consciousness. 

Sergei kicked the back door open and hauled Damir bodily out, dragging him across the threshold like a leopard with a particularly fat gazelle. A black Hummer with tinted windows plowed through the snow and came to a crunchy halt next to them. Two of the apparatchik’s men disembarked. Working quickly, they threw a bag over Damir’s head, then cuffed his wrists and ankles. They made to hoist him into the back, but Sergei disdained their assistance. With a grunt, he lifted Damir’s full weight and tossed him into the vehicle. The Vory men slammed the hatch shut, and glanced around to confirm no one had seen. The entire process had taken less than a minute. 

The old man leaned out the window to address Sergei. “Tomorrow. Keep your mobile on.”

“Fine,” Sergei said, then watched them drive away.

He could already feel the thrum of adrenaline subsiding, and with it, the inevitable onset of excruciating boredom that followed in its wake when he was between amusements. Then he spotted Lydia, distinctive at a distance, hovering near the cab stand.

“I thought I saw him go back inside,” Sergei said as he slid up beside her, making her jump.

She glared at him, and huddled up in her white fur coat. “He was supposed to call one of his friends from work to drive. Now my phone is dead.”

“Why don’t you let me take you home?”

She arched a brow at him, then licked her cherry-glossed lips. “You drove here?”

He laughed softly. “Do I look drunk to you?”

Her apartment was in an old block near the Kremlin, one of the beautiful old buildings that had survived communism thanks to a long stream of party member tenants. There was money behind this girl. The apartment she directed him to wasn’t excessively large, but it was very modernized—full of black countertop, beige leather and stainless steel appliances that looked like they were rarely touched.

“Pretty fancy for a Lubyanka pig,” Sergei observed as Lydia went to the fridge and extracted a bottle of champagne. 

“It’s mine,” she said with a definite chill in her voice. “I’m a partner at my law firm.”

“Is that all.” He grinned, moving around the counter to take the bottle from her. He ignored the glasses she’d taken down from the rack, and instead drank directly from the bottle. 

This caused her to look at him with all the judgement of a royal forced by circumstance to acknowledge a commoner. That really did remind him of Rachel, and now he felt a stirring of heat go through his belly. 

She tugged the bottle out of his hand and poured herself a glass. “If you’re here to kill me, you may as well get on with it.”

He laughed. “I’m not here to kill you, Lydia Arkadyevna.”

She sniffed. “Why not? Father’s disappeared. Along with my step-mother and my half-siblings. No one knows where they are.”

“London,” Sergei informed her, now deigning to take a glass. 

He liked the way her mouth went tight when she heard that. She grimaced. “I wasn’t important enough, I suppose. Black sheep of the family.”

Sergei recalled the scandal from when he was young. It had emerged that Minister of the Interior Arkady Sokolov had been bedding his Indian housemaid for the past five years. Evidently he’d provided financially for his bastard child but not much beyond that. 

He smiled. “I’m not here because of any of that.”

She frowned. “Then why—”

“Damir. He’s been reselling the stolen product that belongs to a very serious organization. That organization asked me to interrogate him tomorrow. But they don’t know that we are… special to each other.”

Lydia’s lips parted in a little o of understanding. “You’re Vetrov. He told me about you. I looked up the case. You nearly killed him.”

“I was twelve. Defending myself.”

“But you are a Vor.”

Sergei put his finger to her mouth, and smiled. “You know you shouldn’t say that word.”

“Interrogate,” she said, though more curious than concerned. “Interrogate how?”

He reached out to tease a lock of her black hair away from her face. “What the fuck are you doing with an asshole like him anyway?”

She shrugged. “He was assigned to protect me after father vanished. Then… I don’t know. Maybe I was bored. Maybe I thought—”

Sergei understood. He was bored of this conversation, so he kissed her before she could finish the sentence, then made her yelp in surprise as he lifted her by the waist onto the counter. From this position, the stiff bodice of her dress elevated her breasts to perfect height for his attentions. 

He nuzzled her cleavage, applying teeth, making her whimper. She seized him by the hair, dragging him back up with surprising strength. She wrapped her legs around him as she kissed him, greedy little mouth tasting of Moet and cherry gloss. 

He smiled against her lips. “Do you trust me?” 

She was distracted, sliding her hands under his shirt so she could drag her manicured claws over his muscled shoulder blades. “Of course not.”

“Good.”

She jumped as he smashed one of the crystal champagne flutes against the counter. Before she could cry out or recoil in fear, he took the stem of the broken flute, caught the hem of her crushed velvet dress with the sharp edge, and separated the fabric all the way up to the décolleté neckline. She gasped as the garment peeled away from her, the cool air raising goosebumps on her skin. 

Sergei leaned back, enjoying the view. He palmed one heavy breast as he leaned into her, whispering encouragement. Her deft hand slid his belt out of his jeans, yanked down his fly, then had him helpless, utterly, deliciously trapped in her firm grip. As she guided him into her, Sergei went into his flesh, letting his mind slip away into the action of muscle, tendon, skin, and teeth.

They fucked mechanically on the counter, vacant except for the tight, tense heat of the act. After this initial confrontation, she led him to her bedroom, where they resumed for another hour. He quickly realized she was very good. Knew what she was doing. He wondered if that was a function of self-knowledge, or if she’d been pro at one point. He knew better than to raise the question, especially with her mouth around his cock, and her hands doing all kinds of interesting things to the rest of him. She had sharp little teeth and fingernails, and she used them, carving raised inflamed lines on every hard parabola of muscle they could find. 

Finally spent, they’d ordered food, which she’d eaten and he’d mostly ignored. She asked him if he could stay. When he’d gotten the call about the time and location, he decided it was close enough to his appointment that here was as good a place as any to pass the time.

Sergei did not sleep. He rarely slept, or if he did, it was in a state so like waking that he hardly knew the difference. He wasn’t sure if it was part of having lived so much of his young life in prison, where it was a matter of survival, or if he simply was not wired for it, as he was not wired for so many other normal human cognitive functions. 

He did not dream, exactly, but he did project his mind into a realm of thought beyond himself. Tactile fantasies that it was Rachel in his arms, drowsing in the early dawn. He could identify the exact moment when he’d realized that provoking her was no longer enough. His one vain attempt to convince her to try him had resulted in her knocking his skinny young body in the dirt. She had proceeded, with perfect deliberation, to kick in two of his ribs so badly that he couldn’t breathe without shooting pain for a month. 

It made him smile in the dark, that memory. This girl child, understanding the zero sum principle of violence just as he had understood it himself a few years prior. Only Sergei had antagonized Damir because he could not resist seeing what the rebar would do to the bully’s skull. Rachel had been reading a textbook in the shade of the rhododendrons, minding her own business when Sergei had imposed on her. He remembered the calculation on her face after that initial punch to his stomach as she decided how much she needed to hurt him to neutralize him. 

She’d wanted nothing to do with Sergei since the day they’d met. It drove him crazy, because he loved her. Her rejection of him was so like her that he loved that too. Problematic, as Vikram might say. Not that Vikram would ever know what his sister really meant to Sergei. If Vikram ever found out, Sergei was sure he’d find himself at the business end of a drone strike. 

“Pathetic,” he murmured to himself. It was the word Rachel had spoken as she stood over him, just before she’d kicked him the second time. This with full rotation, like a soccer player taking a penalty. 

Lydia, curled up to one side of the bed, mumbled plaintively. “What’s pathetic.”

“Nothing,” Sergei said, feeling the mental static increase in volume, masking and erasing his playful affect. Returning him to the thing that merely operated his powerful body, watching behind his eyes for the next thing he could break with it. 

You are nothing. 

He left early, arriving before the apparatchik and his men. The token guards knew him by sight, and let him into the basement entrance, where his old friend was already bound and waiting for him. 

“You know, I didn’t like the Beatles that much,” Sergei said casually as he scrolled through his phone for the album. “I’m not really big on music. I used to listen to a lot of death metal just to feel some noise in my skull. You ever feel like that?”

Damir’s eyes followed him, red and sunken from a night without sleep. The gag cut into the corners of his mouth.

“But you know when you meet someone and they just rub off on you somehow. She likes all that old music, so now when I listen to it, I think of her.”

Damir just stared uncomprehendingly. Sergei glanced around. It was basement storage, all the refuse and detritus pushed to the sides to make a space where it was just them. The ceiling was low with two ventilation grates. It was dark except for the thin blue light that came from the window slits, just above where the ground would be. 

Sergei knew he’d never find the microphones, but he had a pretty good idea about the cameras. He picked the White Album, set it on the radiator a few feet away, and let it play.

“What kind of music does Lydia like?” He crouched down on his haunches in front of his bound captive. ”We didn’t talk much last night.”

A twitch of comprehension. Damir’s eyes widened. Sergei laughed. 

“Don’t worry, I only fucked her. But not the way I’m going to fuck you. We don’t have that much time.”

Rising to his feet, Sergei went to the radiator and turned up the music. The slightly tinny sound of “Happiness is a Warm Gun” played out, John Lennon’s voice filling the space well enough to confuse any listening devices. 

Sergei reached behind him to the sheath belted at the small of his back and drew his favourite wicked ten-inch bowie knife. It was made of Damascus steel, its leather bound bone grip was fitted perfectly to his hand that it was like an extension of himself. 

Lovingly, he ran his palm along the flat of the blade, casting his death’s head smile on his victim. “Did you tell them about me?”

Damir, clearly unsure which was the greater peril, nodded.

“That’s a shame,” Sergei continued. “I was hoping we’d have time to catch up, but if you’ve told them about me, they’re going to ask me about it.”

He smiled, sheathed the knife and made to reach for his mobile, intending to walk away. Then he paused. 

Why not give them a show. 

Oleg knew at once something was wrong. He’d known since the club, watching from the darkness as his protégé toyed needlessly with the target. It didn’t take him much longer to uncover the connection. 

He wasn’t surprised that Sergei had withheld the information. Oleg hoped they could intervene in time to save Damir, but by the time they broke down the door, the crooked cop was extremely dead. His head was twisted the wrong way, his face burned where it had been forced against the hot radiator. His blood sizzled as it continued to drip from his gaping maw. The smell of cooking flesh stunk in Oleg’s nose.

As he looked around, the whole picture began to come clear. Above, the plaster ceiling was cracked open, marked by a smear of blood. It would have taken prodigious strength to hurl Damir’s bulk upwards with the force needed to cause the fracture. There was even more blood on the floor. Looking at him, Oleg realized the impact must have snapped Damir’s teeth shut on his tongue. It was possible he had bled out as a result, but he might have died from one of his other injuries. There was no time to make a clear assessment.

Oleg took a closer look at the floor. There were red boot treads on the cement, leading towards the exit in a casual stride. Oleg sneered at the young man’s confidence. Even if he’d covered his platinum hair, Sergei’s herculean bulk would give him away in any crowd. He might still be close by. 

“The back way,” Oleg told his associate, drawing his pistol. He turned and made his way to the control room they had set up the day before to monitor the now-aborted interrogation. 

As he hurried up the stairs, Oleg cursed himself for thinking he could tame this young demon, but he’d invested a lot of time in Sergei. A juvenile corrections therapist employed by the Vory had identified him, but it was Oleg who had sponsored his recruitment. Most of the kids who ended up in the Taymylyr facility weren’t hardened criminals, just delinquents who came from bad homes. This one was unusual. His family was well off, and he’d secured a certain status for himself. He was in his father’s custody for the summers, which should have made him a target for the less affluent inmates, but he handled himself ruthlessly in the schoolyard. One altercation had resulted in a death. Sergei had been exonerated in spite of having almost certainly provoked the confrontation. This had impressed the Vory talent spotter.

He is destined to be a Vor, Oleg. He looks like an arkangel, but his eyes are as cold as the Evil One.

Oleg had wanted to say that times had changed. That they no longer needed psychopaths and murderers to project their power. They did not need to be evil to be uncompromising. He’d taken Sergei Mikhailovich Vetrov on anyway, provided him with training and seen to his employment once he had completed his sentence. 

Over the years he watched as the young man had transformed himself from the skinny fourteen-year-old boy into a weapon forged in layers of heavy, graceful muscle. While he was in custody, he was limited to training in hand-to-hand combat. When the Vory began training him in knife fighting and marksmanship, it was clear they had a prodigy on their hands.

As a teenager, Sergei was eager to learn, and the Vory wanted him. But as he grew stronger, his violence became more precise and sadistic. Oleg began to notice the way his ice blue eyes seemed to light up at the prospect of bloodshed, and it disturbed him. He had a growing feeling that his organization, in spite of being known the world over for its mercilessness, would suffer from this young man’s total lack of temperance. 

Oleg stormed into the control room. He realized right away that the two men he’d left to monitor the situation were dead. Their throats had both been cut, and they were rank with their own blood.

He didn’t hear Sergei lunge soundlessly from behind the door until it was too late. As Oleg raised the gun, the world seemed to slow down. He knew as the greedy hands came towards him that he’d never reach the trigger in time. He felt and heard the crack as the bones in his own neck separated. He was instantly paralyzed, the world folding in half as he immediately lost sight and vision on one side.

The hands on either side of his head held him upright even as his knees buckled. The blue eyes watched him, wide with fascination. The smiling lips parted in an expression of childlike delight, horrifying on Sergei’s adult visage. Even as he was dying, even as the darkness rushed in from the edges of his vision, Oleg was relieved when the face relaxed into boredom. Disinterested now that the coveted moment was over. 

You bastard, he thought dimly as the bloodied soles of Sergei’s boots passed over him.

Chapter 5: The Fall