Dracula's Ghost: Apocalypse - Chapter 10
Part II: And the Sea Gave Up Its Dead...
I.
Van Helsing
1893
He spends the morning reading through the papers of Jonathan Harker, and a dread certainty beats within his breast – Harker’s tormentor and Lucy’s monster are one and the same. He studies the enemy’s mind with the care of a chess player marking his opponent’s strategy, for the thing that calls itself Dracula has laid its plans with great care, buying up properties all over London and covering his tracks to ensure that his name will never be known. Had Jonathan not escaped that awful place, Van Helsing thinks, we would still be stumbling in the dark. Dracula slinks through London like a tiger, and the English, with their modern economy and their telegraph system and their great empire, are no safer than the poorest villager. He speaks a little more with Renfield that afternoon, and though the madman reveals nothing of value, his smug grin and cryptic phrases hint at unrevealed knowledge. Van Helsing watches him through the peephole after his departure from the cell, and Renfield stands unmoving at the window as he stares toward Carfax Abbey. He knows.
When the sun sets, Van Helsing walks the grounds of the asylum. There is some danger in his nighttime patrol, for the route takes him uncomfortably close to the edge of the property, and the gas lights are too far away to illuminate the path. The enemy could be waiting in ambush, and though he wears a crucifix and carries a vial of holy water, he holds few illusions about his odds for survival if the enemy chooses to strike – and he has known for some time that he is being followed. He turns, and a shadow fades into the trees; he listens, and a twig snaps at the edge of the path. Van Helsing walks with a steady tread, careful not to hurry – he is determined to show no fear if his adversary is watching – but a tingle of dread crawls up his spine, a psychic intuition of hot breath upon his neck. His fingers tighten about the vial of holy water as he whispers, his voice barely audible above his own footsteps. “Come out and show yourself. Such a fearsome creature can surely hold his own against one old man – or are you only brave when stalking a frightened girl?”
“Evening, doc.”
Abraham Van Helsing nearly jumps out of his skin as Quincy Morris steps onto the path. The Stetson is tucked low over his face, and the dark coat, which reaches nearly to his ankles, half-conceals his outline in the blackness of night. He carries a rifle over one shoulder.
“Good evening, Herr Morris. What brings you out to enjoy the night air?”
“Same thing as you, I reckon. Look at the stars, take a sip from the flask, and have a go at anything that comes out of yonder house. Our friend Mister Harker says that bullets are no good against such a monster, but I aim to find out.” Quincy glowers at the distant outline of Carfax Abbey. “For Lucy’s sake.”
“Yes, for Lucy’s sake.”
“She was…” The Texan pauses, overcome by strong emotion. “She was everything that I was not – honest and kindhearted. To see that taken away… Why?”
“Who knows?” Van Helsing thinks of his own son, robbed of life at the hand of his nephew. “Sometimes, the innocent suffer and the guilty prosper. Whether this happens for some greater purpose or is simply the work of evil men, or evil circumstances, I cannot fathom. I know only that our duty is to struggle while we draw breath. Perhaps we will prevail, or perhaps we will all die, but we will fight.”
“For Lucy’s sake.”
“Yes, for poor Lucy, and for God only knows how many others.” Van Helsing touches the sleeve of the dark coat and points. “He crossed a continent, only to place his lair in the very shadow of those who know the truth. Perhaps it is merely blind chance.”
“But you don’t think so.”
Abraham Van Helsing thinks of his son. The mortuary had covered Isaak with a sheet, but he had insisted upon seeing the truth with his own eyes, and he had peeled back the white linen to expose the lacerated hole of the shotgun blast that had blown away the lower half of one lung. Six months after his death, Hanna went into the asylum. He had carried on with his medical practice, his attendance at Mass, his burgeoning interest in the paranormal, with the ruin of his life ever-present, as if God had looked upon him, and finding him wanting in some unknown measure, had turned His face away completely. He continued onward, suffering daily for the last twelve years, seeking an answer and finding none.
“I do not know what I think.” He claps the younger man on the shoulder. “But these things – our friend Jonathan’s escape, the sharp mind of his wife, the location of our enemy’s lair, and above all, the courage of our companions – these things are gifts. We will give thanks for them all, and we will use them to our advantage.”
II.
London
1982
The United Kingdom fights a brief war with Argentina that spring, and if the conflict is mild by historical standards – less than a thousand are killed on both sides – the numbers belie its significance. The Crown loses seven ships to the conflict, and the logistics – a war fought at a distance of eight thousand miles – stretches Britain’s military to its limits. In the end, Argentine troops are driven out of the Falklands, and the British lion – aging and weakened though it might be – proves that it still has teeth. Leonid Brezhnev, the leader of the Soviet Union, dies in November after years of declining health, but the nation itself, as sclerotic as its departed leader, stumbles zombie-like toward the new year, its decline concealed by grand pronouncements and pageantry.
When he reads the newspaper, Quincy Morris pays careful attention to the photograph of Nicolae Ceausescu, his head bowed before the open coffin. The prior month, two men from the Securitate made their way to England, and he had watched as they snooped around the outskirts of Carfax Abbey before following them through the streets of London and arranging one final meeting on Hampstead Heath. Now, one body rests in the freezer of the Coroner’s Court, and the second lies undiscovered beneath the surface of a pond. While he has been watching Romania from afar, someone in Bucharest has taken an interest in his affairs. He wonders what they expected to find. A monster? Perhaps, but the dead men encountered no unthinking brute, but something colder, more calculating. And far more dangerous, he muses.
At the base of the stone angel, he finds the dismembered remains of a field mouse. Quincy Morris waits, perfectly still, until the owl flies from the forest. It lands on his shoulder, and they take in the night together, deeply contented.
III.
Western Poland
1989
The church had been destroyed in the war, and the cemetery was mostly forgotten, its contents hidden from curious eyes by a second growth of forest. Its headstones were pockmarked with the bullets of some forgotten battle, and perhaps it remained forgotten for that very reason, for the honored dead mingled poorly with those who passed from the world in pain and fear. The owl knew only that the air was cool and that it found comfort in some hidden aura of the bloodied tombs. It had flown throughout the night, its body carried aloft on the breeze or propelled forward by a rapid beating of wings. It snatched mice from empty fields and circled periodically to find its bearings, navigating through some means known only to itself.
The concrete box was little more than two feet long, the resting place of a stillborn child, and the gap in its lid was little more than a knife-edge thickness. The owl fit easily through the open space, for its body was not wholly corporeal, and it rested among the bones as the sun rose, lying perfectly still as it waited out the daylight hours.
IV.
Bucharest
“Get in.” Iulian Vlad opened the door of the waiting car, and the lieutenant slid uneasily into the rear seat. “I told you to be prepared for our next meeting, but from the vapid expression on your face, I expect our conversation to be unproductive. What did you bring me?”
“I can report only what I see.” Lieutenant Albert Bud shook his head. “Colonel Suta and I have been working diligently, and –”
“Only what you see – have you seen the fitness reports prepared by your unit’s political commissar? Lieutenant Albert Bud…” Iulian Vlad held an imaginary slip of paper in front of his glasses, moving it back and forth to bring the writing into focus. “Performs the bare minimum and displays a marked lack of enthusiasm for Party-related training activities.”
“My unit’s readiness is among the highest in the Romanian Army…”
“And if your unit is led by an officer of questionable loyalty, its readiness becomes a weapon, easily turned against the state that it serves. Let me tell you a secret, boy – all of the political officers’ reports read like this. Do you know why that is?” The youngster shook his head, and Vlad gave him a sympathetic nod. “Two reasons: when your political fitness report finds you marginally suitable, it becomes a weapon to be wielded against you. Attract the wrong attention, and anyone who doesn’t like you can pull your report as evidence.”
“What’s the other reason?”
“Because no one fucking believes anymore.” The Director General’s lip curled upward in disgust. “Everyone knows that we’ve made an utter mess of the country, but no one can change anything, because that would shatter the illusion of an infallible Party. Of an infallible President. But that is not your problem – most of your counterparts are as faithless as you, but they are too dull to recognize the implications. But a faithless man with a degree of intelligence? Of drive? I think you are walking a high tightrope, and it is fraying beneath your feet.”
“Still, I can give only what I have…”
“Then find what I need. Colonel Suta is meeting with the President today, and by this afternoon, I expect that his own tightrope will have broken completely. The only question now is whether you want to remain standing or to fall into the abyss with him.”
V.
In the place beneath the world
The floor was constructed of unfinished lumber, but the bar was fine mahogany, and the walls were papered with a decorative pattern of sailing ships that were out of place in a cowboy’s watering hole. The Mexican coat of arms, an eagle devouring a serpent, was carved into one panel of the bar and provided a splash of color to the dark wood. His glass was filled with whiskey and a cigar smoldered in the ashtray, but Quincy Morris ignored both, for he knew that the alcoholic bite and acrid smoke would leave no taste in his mouth.
The saloon existed only in his memory, but it gave him a feeling that passed for happiness as he slept away the daylight hours. It had rested on the outskirts of Los Angeles, a booming port of fifty thousand at the time of his visit, but the details of that trip – he had sold a herd of cattle at a handsome profit, the first step toward a larger fortune built in Argentina – were remembered only vaguely. Like so much of my old life. He knew that he had left Texas under a cloud of disgrace, but the events that preceded his departure were little more than fragments in his mind. We rode out on the llanos, Quincy thought. She was unhappy because her husband treated her poorly. He tried to picture her face and could not.
“Hello.”
The visitor was dressed like a Victorian gentleman, with a black coat and vest offset by the blood-red ascot knotted about the throat. He was thin-faced with a mustache that extended well past the lips and a Van Dyke beard, a style not worn in England for two centuries. A flower, blood-red in color and matching the ascot about his neck, was tucked into one lapel. On the far side of the bar, the mirror reflected only the empty tables.
“I have been looking for you for a long time. I have been hoping for a chance to speak.”
“Then you should have come to London.” Quincy sipped from the glass and tasted nothing. “We could have talked in person.”
“Of course.” Fury passed over the visitor’s face and vanished with equal swiftness, like the dissipation of a summer squall, as thin fingers caressed the flower at his shoulder. Quincy’s eyes drifted toward the window as he gauged the hours remaining until sunset. “But since the dead cannot travel at will, perhaps we should converse now. I have time in abundance, but I fear that your own hours are running short.”
“I suppose you would think so.” Quincy closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. My God, this man is tiresome. “But as I recall, I beat you when we last met.”
“When we last met,” Dracula said, scowling, “you were killed – most unpleasantly.”
“And yet here I am.”
“Very true. It pains me to admit, but you did well in Budapest. Switching the boxes to deposit me onto an empty rock instead of returning to my home? I never imagined that you were capable of such a thing… but I suppose that is not my way.”
Quincy took another sip of whiskey, and the pause gave him an extra heartbeat to consider the enemy’s words.
“And what is your way?”
“I think you know my way well enough.” The thin man chuckled. “Prepare the battleground and strike by frontal assault. Tactical retreat when necessary, but always with an eye toward the next battle.”
“Is that what you call it? Jonathan Harker beat you, and that was far more than a tactical retreat.”
“And where is Jonathan Harker?” The smile did not falter, but the eyes blazed with ill-concealed anger. “Moldering in a London grave, while I am here – the successor of man, just as man was the successor of the apes. However, I did not come to discuss the past. I came to offer you a chance at life.”
“And what is your offer?”
“Vacate London and yield Carfax Abbey and the castle – my castle – to me. Turn over the descendants of Jonathan Harker as payment for my troubles. Your own descendant should be mine as well, but as a sign of my generosity, you may deal with her as you wish.”
Quincy placed the cigar between his teeth, and though there was no taste of tobacco, he noted the glowing ember with satisfaction as he inhaled deeply. The smoke that wafted into the room vanished almost immediately, but for an instant, it was there, a concrete reminder of the man that he had been.
“I think not,” he said. “John, Mina, Lucy – they still live in my own memory, and I don’t believe they would want me to yield. If you want your home back, then come and take it.”
“Very well.” Dracula grinned, and Quincy caught a glimpse of sharp teeth. “Just remember that I can punish the dead as surely as the living, and when your time comes, do not say that you were never warned. One final question…”
Quincy Morris acknowledged his query with a single raised eyebrow.
“Who is Lucy?”
“No one important,” Quincy said. “Just someone that I knew a long time ago.”
VI.
Bucharest
“Out with it – I have work to do.” Nicolae Ceausescu looked up from his desk in agitation. The supplicant wore a colonel’s insignia, but he stammered like a schoolgirl, and they could have done just as well, the President thought, if the report had been delivered by the janitor.
“I have an update on the case of Lucyna Wilk.”
“The Polack’s daughter? What about her?”
“We are still working to unravel the network, but last week, I commenced the surveillance of a safe house in Târgoviște. The details of our findings are included in my written report, and –”
“I asked to be notified when you found her.” Ceausescu fixed the man with a withering stare. “So did you find her, or not?”
“No sir,” Mihai Suta said quickly, “but we have a suspect in her disappearance.”
“Good.” Ceausescu’s mood brightened considerably. This uniformed dullard was wasting his time, but arrests and interrogations livened the drudgery of his workday. “Question him thoroughly and instruct the prosecutor to begin trial preparations.”
“Sir…” The colonel’s face turned a deeper red. “He is not in custody. The suspect eluded our surveillance team, but I have several leads on his last known location –”
“Of course you do. Tell me, colonel – do I have any men under my command that are not incompetent?”
“Sir?”
“Perhaps I was unclear.” A hot rush of acid began to boil in his stomach. “You have one task – one very simple task – to find a suspect and bring him alive to Bucharest. Now, you will find that I can be very reasonable, and if the criminal in question had died in custody, I would certainly not hold that against you. But to have him under surveillance, and to let him slip right out of your fucking hand – why shouldn’t I have you arrested for treason?”
“Sir, please…”
Ceausescu savored the colonel’s discomfort, for he had brought more than one man to tears, and a general had actually wet himself in the very spot where the colonel now stood. He acknowledged the necessity of his inner circle, for a man could hardly run the country without functionaries to carry out his orders, but every subordinate within reach of the top rung of the ladder was a potential rival, and if the colonel had shown any sign of defiance or independence, his fate would have been sealed in that very moment. Instead, Mihai Suta averted his eyes, and while he did not cry or soil the new carpet, his face became deathly pale. Good.
“Here is what you are going to do.” Ceausescu spoke softly, for men who shouted betrayed weakness. “You are going to return to the criminal’s last known location, and you are going to cordon off everything within a fifty-kilometer radius. I will assist you with your search, because I am going to find the darkest, coldest cell in Bucharest to house our prisoner. I plan to fill that cell by the end of the week, and if our suspect is not located, we will need to search… elsewhere for an appropriate resident. As it happens, I have someone in mind already. Do you understand?”
“Yes sir.” The colonel met his eye for an instant, then looked away as he brushed an imaginary speck of lint from his uniform.
“Is there anything else?”
“As a matter of fact, there is.” Suta held out a tattered file folder. “My report documents certain items regarding the suspect’s background, and you may find these to be of interest.”
“Leave it. I want you back in my office within twenty-four hours, and I expect progress when I see you again. That is all.”
When the door closed, Ceausescu picked up the report. He had known for weeks that the colonel, doubtless prodded to action by Iulian Vlad, had been on the trail of Acwulf Kiel. Ceausescu remembered a fragment from an old report on the state of the orphanages in Romania – he had found the report not to his liking, and its author had been arrested – and if there were problems in the orphanages, perhaps he could pin the blame on the German… or on the hapless colonel, if Acwulf was sufficiently convincing. He skimmed the first page, and his eyes widened.
There are moments in which a man’s understanding of the universe is shaken to the core, and as he flipped through the pages, Nicolae Ceausescu felt the earth shift beneath his feet. The attached documents included the birth certificate of a male child born in Konigsberg in 1909 and an identification card certifying that the bearer had been a member in good standing of the National Socialist German Workers Party since 1934. It can’t be… Acwulf looked forty years old, perhaps a well-kept fifty, in a country that wore out its citizens by thirty-five. He would have to be eighty by now – and yet the photograph was unmistakable. The employment of a fascist in the upper echelons of the Socialist Republic of Romania was unforgivable, and under normal circumstances, the men who brought him into the fold would be identified and punished. Ceausescu’s mind, however, was preoccupied by a different question. He walked to his lavatory and stared in the mirror – at the wrinkled face, the thinning gray hair, the paunch that had accumulated around his midsection.
Why does Acwulf not age like other men?
VII.
Aboard the Ceres
Alex Penkovsky sat at the wheel, one eye on the ship’s bearing as he listened to the weather report. He missed the two mates, for there were a hundred things that could go wrong on a ship, and without extra eyes to watch for maritime traffic or relieve him at the helm, he was forced to pick up the slack himself. Later, when the sun was higher in the sky, he would place one of Sergei’s killers at the wheel while he caught an hour of sleep – “See what the compass is reading? Maintain that heading” – and hope that his newly-minted seaman did not steer them off-course. With our luck, we’ll end up somewhere in Finland. Sergei stepped into the wheelhouse, and Penkovsky winced at the sight of the pistol in his belt.
“If you’re going to shoot me, do it now,” he said. “Put me out of my misery.”
“Can’t. No one else knows where we’re going.” Sergei paused, and Penkovsky realized that the hired killer was still rattled after last night’s events. “Do you really think that someone else is on board?”
“I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Pankov and Galkin could have cut up the life raft, but they couldn’t have gone into the hold – the hatch was twisted on its fucking hinges! No stowaway could have done that.”
“Perhaps there was an explosion belowdecks?” Sergei watched him closely, like a patient awaiting a doctor’s prognosis.
“An explosion could do that kind of damage, but there would be smoke, burn marks – and a blast of that size would punch a hole through the hull and send us to the bottom. Besides, we’d have noticed the detonation.”
“Then what? What if they aren’t trapped or hiding in the hold?”
“Then they jumped overboard,” Penkovsky said. Or you killed them.
“They jumped into the water,” Sergei mused, “after cutting up the life raft.”
It makes sense if you expect to die, Penkovsky thought. Sergei had disposed of the English crew, and it was reasonable to assume that three Russian sailors would be added to their number at the end of the journey. Indeed, he found it depressingly plausible that the mates had chosen the time and manner of their death, but he would admit no such thing to the blonde killer at his side.
“Who knows? Fuck them both for leaving us in the lurch.”
VIII.
Somewhere in Poland
The village was bisected by a muddy road and edged by a marginal plot of farmland, and the owl circled, descended, and landed in a spindly pine tree as a noise caught its attention. A few mice scampered through the brush, and the large eyes caught a flash of headlights as a tractor worked a distant field, but these were not what drew the owl’s attention. In the center of the road, a half-dozen children kicked a ball, snatching a few minutes of twilight play as the sun vanished. They moved like a murmuration of starlings, this mixed knot of boys and girls, assembling into formation, then breaking and re-forming as they followed the bouncing, irregular jaunt of the ball. One boy fell, tripped by his opposite, and there were shoves and angry words; a girl intervened before the pair came to blows. After several minutes, a dinner bell rang from a nearby house, and the tangle of children made their way toward the center of the village, their movements cloaked in the encroaching darkness.
The owl followed them with a swiveling motion of its head, but none of the children looked upward toward the hidden sentinel. Had they done so, they might have pointed, imitated its call with a childlike hooting, or thrown a rock in its direction, but none would have fathomed the thoughts that passed through its mind. When they were gone, the owl swooped down, snatching a mouse from the weeds and devouring its prey at the edge of the road before ascending again. It circled once, then continued east, following the invisible beacon that marked its destination.
IX.
Aboard the Ceres
“Hello, granddaughter.” Jos Van Helsing was dressed in a checkered shirt, denim overalls, and knee-high rubber boots. The shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbows, Katrina saw, and the forearms were surprisingly tan.
“I told you to go away,” she grumbled, wrinkling her nostrils against the earthy odor of manure.
“But I came all the way from Argentina to see you – I barely escaped with my life after the war, and to return now, do you know what kind of risk that entails?”
“None at all,” she replied. “You’ve been dead for three years. You’re a ghost – or a figment of my imagination.”
“On the contrary, I feel very much alive, more so than I have in years. Certainly more so than your friend, whose resting place you will be sharing before the voyage is over. Tell me, Katrina – why do you suppose he brought you along? I think that he wanted to stock his larder – the crew is indispensable, and you certainly can’t make a long voyage without bringing provisions. Have you been feeling all right? A little weak, perhaps, or ill?”
“I feel fine,” she replied. “Tell me, Jos – how was prison?”
“The girl wants to bait me.” Jos smiled, hooking his thumbs into his suspenders, and Katrina was surprised to find that his face could appear quite sympathetic. “She’s alone and afraid, and most likely about to die, so she insults me to cover her fear. To be honest? Once the war was over, when I was safely away from Europe and out of danger of being hanged, the whole of my existence became a prison of sorts. When the blood ceases to flow, everything else takes on shades of drab gray. But the memory remains, and the old bloodlust never quite goes away. Of course, you’ll have plenty of time to ponder this when you belong to him – ironic, isn’t it? You hated me for all that I did, and you are fated to become as I am. Worse even, because there will be no trial, no prison, no death to relieve the world of your crimes.”
“You aren’t real,” she said, clenching her jaw against the rising anger. “You’re rotting in a potter’s field, or in hell – I don’t really care which. I’m going to wake up at any minute, and when I do, I won’t have to deal with you anymore.”
“So wrong, dear granddaughter.” The shade of Jos Van Helsing clucked its tongue in disapproval. “I made you, I am a part of you, and when you are dead and sleeping with your new lover, you will –”
The knife was in her hand, a long blade with a wickedly curved edge, and Katrina did not stop to ponder its sudden appearance. She struck, swinging a wild overhand blow toward the junction of neck and shoulder, and when the blade struck home, Jos offered no resistance. A series of emotions crossed his face – surprise, then pain, then the quiet, satisfied look of a man vindicated. He sank to the floor, dying, but the darkness of the hold reverberated with his laughter, and Katrina screamed aloud as she came awake.
There was no body, no knife, no blood on her hands, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief before sinking into despair.
I killed him. And it made me happy.
And if I killed him so easily, what else am I capable of?
X.
Penkovsky steered the ship into the encroaching darkness, and as the waves rocked the boat with the lull of a baby’s cradle, he fought the urge to close his eyes and let sleep carry him away. An hour before sunset, the four killers had unpacked a large duffel, and they now patrolled the deck, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders. Iosif, the oldest, was aptly named, for he resembled a youthful Stalin with his heavy mustache and shock of thickly-grown hair. Rail thin, he walked with a slight limp, the souvenir of a bullet wound received in the Hindu Kush. Georgy and Oleg were youths of broadly similar appearance; both were veterans of the Afghan war, but their thickly-muscled torsos hinted at good food and the relative leisure of distance from the front lines.
The younger men were nervous, and Penkovsky wondered whether their patrol would end in an accidental shooting, but he understood their sentiments well enough – when he served in Afghanistan, the mujahadeen would slip through the wire of the massive airbase at Bagram, and an unwary sentry would vanish into the darkness. The captives would be found the next morning, their throats cut or their genitals removed, and in one particularly grisly case, a dismembered body was found in a bag made of the soldier’s own skin. Or so it was rumored – after the first disappearances, one could have told the luckless conscripts of the Red Army that their bunkmates had been carried off by ghosts, and they would have believed. Their edginess settled one thing, at least, in Penkovsky’s mind – Pankov and Galkin had not died at their hands. The hatch opened, and Sergei made his way into the wheelhouse. There were bags beneath his eyes, and the blue irises were rimmed in red.
“You look like shit,” Penkovsky said. “No sleep this afternoon?”
“Nyet.” Sergei’s fingers trembled as he lit a cigarette. “I can’t sleep when the boat rocks. Besides, I’ve been thinking about the man who hired us – what do you know of him?”
“Nothing much.”
“Is that unusual in your business? To undertake a long voyage based on nothing more than a man’s word?”
“In my business,” Penkovsky said, “a man’s word is all that you have. Someone tells you to sail to a certain port for money – maybe the cargo will be there, maybe the police will be waiting instead.”
“But this was an unusual request, correct?” Sergei was probing for something, and Penkovsky tried to plot the route of their discussion.
“Not necessarily. You’d be surprised how often a boat goes missing from one port and shows up in another, refitted and reflagged for the benefit of its new owner.” Although when that happens, the crew doesn’t usually end up dead. “Why do you ask?”
“Because our friend, the German, did not simply meet me on the street. He came highly recommended from –”
Sergei’s words were cut off by a loud cry and a long burst of automatic weapons fire.
XI.
“Sergei Vladimirovich…” Georgy’s arm was twisted at an unnatural angle, and blood poured from the wound in his throat. “It crept up behind me, and I didn’t hear a thing…”
The deck was illuminated by the ship’s floodlights, and Sergei’s eyes carefully scanned the open area. He had gone to Afghanistan in 1979, when the armored columns had taken Kabul with such ease that the Politburo was certain of an easy victory. By the time of his departure in 1982, he had been confined to a fortified base, afraid to venture out lest he walk into a sharpshooter’s crosshairs or pass by a bearded mujahid with a concealed knife, and a familiar sensation of dread tickled the base of his neck. How an assailant could have crept up on Georgy unawares –
“Where the hell is Oleg?”
“Oleg…” Georgy’s eyes rolled in their sockets. He was going into shock from blood loss, and Sergei guessed that no more than a few minutes of life remained for the wounded man. “It took Oleg and disappeared into the hold.”
Impossible. The bulkheads weighed several hundred kilograms, far too heavy for a man to lift –yet he could see that the lid was askew on its base, as if it had been dropped imperfectly into place. At his feet, Georgy drew a hitching gasp, relaxed, and lay still.
“What now?” Sergei wheeled – he had nearly forgotten about Penkovsky.
“Now, we throw him overboard,” he said. “And when the sun comes up, we figure out a way to get into the hold.” The thought of entering that darkened space, like a cave filled with monsters, frightened him, but they needed to get inside before the next sunset and root out whatever was picking them off. There are only three of us now.