The Fourth Courier

by Timothy Jay Smith

  “Next!” the officer cried.

  General Mladic stepped forward to hand her his passport.

  She didn’t look at it, instead examining his suitcase. “Your baggage must be inspected first,” she said.

  He pointed to the gold-embossed word on the cover of his passport, which she held in fingers with nails chewed down to the quick. “Diplomat,” Dravko read aloud for her benefit. “My baggage is never inspected.”

  She frowned and stamped his passport. “Next!”

  He hauled the cumbersome suitcase into the departure hall. Dr. Ustinov’s instructions had been precise: bring his million dollars in a dark tan suitcase with buckled straps of specified dimensions from a particular Moscow factory. The plan was to exchange their bags—his money for a bomb—and if anyone later studied the airport’s surveillance videos, the physicist wanted the general to appear to arrive and depart with the same suitcase.

  Acquiring the matching suitcase had been a challenge. Central planning had never translated into central dispatch. It was almost easier to organize shipments of weapons from Poland than to place an order for a suitcase with a Moscow factory. But he was confident that the suitcase exactly matched Sergej’s, even in weight, for again the physicist had been precise: twenty-two kilograms. In accumulating the million-dollar payoff, Dravko had begun to think of sums by their weights: so many bills translated into so many grams. Like a bargaining housewife, he had had to juggle denominations to fit his allowance.

  A mesmerized crowd stared up at the departure board suspended from the ceiling. Periodically it updated itself with the sound of shuffling cards as the cockeyed letters and numbers reset themselves. Each time it did, the women gripped their scarves tighter, the men scratched more furiously under their caps, and all prayed that the scrolling messages would bring good news, but for most, good news—along with their flights—had been DELAYED or CANCELED. Dravko elbowed his way through the crowd until he drew close enough to read his flight’s status: ON TIME.

  Overhead signs directed him to the gate through overheated corridors filled with sweaty travelers uncomfortably draped over plastic seats. While some slept, others stood weary sentry, protecting meager belongings stuffed into duffels and backpacks. They were the intellectuals and merchants, always the first to flee. Dravko thought they looked like tramps and gave them wide berth. Sometimes children touched him, begging, and he spun around, scaring them away.

  A haphazard queue had formed at the gate. Ticket holders without reserved seats jostled for places in line. They were willing to go anywhere, and clutched wads of dinars in fists too small to hold enough of the worthless money to buy their way out. Some offered to pay in dollars or marks, and the clerks wrote down their names, their hard currency making them the favored among castoffs.

  “Only passengers with tickets!” the two harried agents took turns shouting. One blonde, the other brunette, they had matching bangs and eyeliner.

  “Wait over there,” they told everyone else.

  The passengers who had anted up hefty bribes for tickets shuffled forward, using their suitcases and children as fortifications against line jumpers. No one doubted that the plane was overbooked. With each person who checked in, the remaining passengers fretted that their life savings couldn’t save their lives after all.

  “I’ll sit on the can!” one man shouted.

  “Please, let the children stand in the aisle! Save them!”

  “We need another airplane!”

  “That’s right, another airplane!”

  The complaint spread and people grew unruly. What remained of the queue collapsed. General Mladic tried to maneuver his way to the check-in desk—his seat was definitely protected—but his suitcase proved too cumbersome. A security guard recognized him and came to his aid. “General Mladic, sir, let me help you with that.”

  The guard forced a passage for them to approach the counter where the brunette took Dravko’s ticket. She wore too much makeup, trying to downplay her fleshy nose. “I need to see your passport.”

  He handed it to her.

  She glanced between the picture and him. “You looked like Marcello Mastroianni when you were younger.”

  “And now?” he asked.

  The clerk turned red and stammered, “I don’t know.”

  Dravko started down the gangway.

  “Hey Colonel Big Shot!” a young man called after him. “I’ll carry your suitcase if you save me a seat!”

  “Hush! Don’t you know who that is?”

  “That’s Dravko Mladic!”

  Dravko, smiling to himself, stepped into the airplane. The stewardess showed him to his seat. She took his cap, but he declined to surrender his coat, preferring to keep it on so people could see his medals. She helped him lift his suitcase into the overhead bin.

  It fit exactly, just as Dr. Ustinov had planned.

  CHAPTER TEN

  JACEK RUMMAGED IN THE SMALL refrigerator, pushing aside juice cartons and jars of pickles. “Where the fuck’s the mayonnaise?” Lilka entered the kitchen pinning up her hair. “I sorted things out in there. Your stuff is on the second shelf.”

  “Where’s my mayonnaise?”

  “Did you buy some?”

  “There it is.” He took a jar from a lower shelf.

  “That’s mine.”

  “Fuck off.”

  Lilka took a box of cereal from the cupboard. It felt empty and she shook it, then noticed the soggy cornflakes in a bowl on the table. “This was mine, too.”

  “I have a long day today. I have to eat something.” He slathered mayonnaise on slices of bread that he’d lined up on the counter. “I’ll buy more cereal, for fucking Christ’s sake.”

  “That’s not the point. We have an agreement.”

  “What’s a bowl of cereal? A state offense?”

  “Only my breakfast. Where’s Aleks?”

  Jacek displayed a can of tuna. “I bought this.”

  He grabbed an opener off the counter and started working around the tin.

  “I asked, where is Aleks?”

  “I’d’a told you if I knew.”

  “You’re not telling me something about him.”

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know.”

  “Where is he staying at night? You must know that.”

  “I haven’t seen him.”

  “Doesn’t he still work for you sometimes?”

  “Not when he doesn’t show up.”

  The opener jammed on the can’s rounded corner. Jacek twisted it free and used it to pry open the can instead. Using a fork, he spilled tuna flakes over the mayonnaised bread. “He’s eighteen and got a girlfriend.”

  “I know. She has those mean dogs.”

  “He likes them.”

  “Why does he have to take care of them?”

  “He’s trained them good.”

  “I think she’s got Aleks trained. She’s not helping him. I don’t like her.”

  “He likes her. He’s also got a dick and is growing up. You think he wants to sleep here?”

  “Growing up is one thing. Getting a girl pregnant is another.”

  Jacek tossed the empty can into the trash. “You think I don’t understand what you’re insinuating?”

  “We should want it different for him. Both of us should.”

  “You and me’d be okay if you didn’t have such highfalutin ideas.”

  “Aren’t parents supposed to want it better for their kids? And to be better than we are?”

  “He’s no different than me or you. He’s us, Lilka, us, and you didn’t raise the average as much as you like to think.”

  “I don’t pretend I’m not part of him. I don’t pretend I’m not part of you and me. And I’m not pretending when I hope everything is better for him.”

  “Yeah, well, don’t get your hopes up.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. And don’t drink my coffee. I got a long haul today.”

  “I’m
taking half a cup. We’ll call it even on the cereal.”

  “We’ll call it even! Jesus, it’s like a fucking bank around here. Everything has to be negotiated.”

  “We have an agreement.”

  “You and your fucking agreement! Here, you want cereal?” Jacek dumped the dregs of his cereal into her bowl. Milk splashed on the table. A few soggy flakes floated to the surface.

  Lilka dumped it in the sink. “I’m not hungry.”

  Jacek laughed at her. “Sure you’re not. And what’s it matter, you can always eat at the Lounge. So who’s your new fuck?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You were gone all day yesterday.”

  “I was at the dzialka.”

  “Is he another one of your rich businessmen? A Rockefeller? Is that it, he’s a Rockefeller and I’m only a Rypinski?”

  “It was never about money and you know it.”

  “If I dropped the whole world in your lap and said, ‘Here, it’s yours,’ you’d say, ‘Make it bigger, make it better, make it shinier.’ It always has to be first class for you. Working the first-class lounge. Fucking first-class lovers.”

  “He’s not a lover.”

  “Only because you haven’t fucked him yet. What is he, another pilot? You like your pilots, don’t you? Or is he a steward who settled for you because he couldn’t find another steward’s asshole to fuck?”

  “You make me sick.” Lilka turned to leave the kitchen.

  Jacek grabbed her arm and swung her around. “Who is he?”

  “He’s a policeman.”

  “What kind of policeman can afford a first-class whore like you?”

  “An FBI policeman,” she boasted.

  “FBI?”

  “Like on TV.”

  “I know the fucking FBI. I watch TV, too. What’s he doing here besides fucking you?”

  “He’s investigating a murder case.”

  “What murder case?”

  “He hasn’t said.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  “I sensed it was confidential.”

  “Don’t you think you should ask him?”

  “Why do I need to know?”

  “Don’t bring him here. I don’t want a cop sniffing around.”

  “Why would he sniff around here?”

  “Because cops can’t help themselves.”

  “That implies he’d find something. What are you hiding here?”

  “It’s Aleks who’s hiding stuff. I don’t know where he’s keeping it.”

  “What stuff?”

  “Do you ever look around and see what’s going on? Or are you just wearing sunglasses all the time?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Heroin. You don’t see the signs? You’re a fucking stupid cow sometimes.”

  “You got Aleks on heroin?”

  “Whoa, hold on. Aleks got Aleks on heroin.”

  “No. Tell me you’re not supplying your own son.”

  “He knew all the dangers. Fuck, he just has to look at me. Isn’t that what you would tell him?”

  She lunged at him. “He’s our son!”

  He pushed her away. “Okay, I’m responsible. I’m trying to get off the shit but he knew I can still get it.”

  “You could have said no.”

  “I told him it was a bitch to quit.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “And have you crying all over him? I’ll get him cleaned up, and I don’t need a goddamn cop sniffing around the apartment. And don’t say anything to Aleks, either, because he might really run away if he knows you know.”

  Jacek poured coffee into his thermos. “I’m saving you a cup,” he said, and slipped it back on the warmer. He put his sandwiches, two liters of water, and a six-pack of beer into a Styrofoam cooler and walked out.

  Lilka listened as he left the apartment and heard the reassuring sound of the latch as the door closed. His footsteps quickly faded away. He often forgot things and came back a minute later, sometimes dealing her one last punch for making him forget whatever it was, but not that morning. She knew he was far enough down the stairs that he’d only climb back up if he’d forgotten the key to his van. She went to the kitchen window, where she could see the exit from the parking lot. She felt numb, responsible because she hadn’t paid attention to what was happening to Aleks. As Jacek’s white van drove off, she crumpled over the sink, sobbing, gagging every time she thought the word heroin. It had destroyed her husband, destroyed their marriage, and now it had its hooks in their son.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE BUS SHUDDERED TO A stop.

  The end of the line.

  A dead end in the woods where the road deteriorated into a rough track.

  Dr. Ustinov stepped down into the mud, clutching his twin suitcases. The driver followed him off the bus and faced the dark woods to piss. Judging from the absence of waiting passengers, he had a lonely return journey ahead of him that night.

  Sergej started walking up the road. A dense fog made it hard to see trees only a few feet away. Soon he came to the guard hut with its door slightly ajar. He set down his suitcases, retrieved a flask from his satchel, and swallowed from it, followed by a second shot, needing vodka’s encouragement to approach what might be his own end of the line. Sergej was gambling that the government hadn’t unleashed its teletypists to make a wholesale broadcast of his disappearance. Defections were a national shame that connoted a massive failure of Russian intelligence.

  Behind him, he heard the bus drive away. He slipped the flask into his side pocket and stepped to where he could see inside the guard hut without being seen. Two soldiers, bundled in blankets, were playing cards at a small table. Underneath it, their knees touched, and their mud-splattered boots filled the space. With every breath, they exhaled a foggy cloud; a glowing heater in the corner barely dented the frigid cold.

  The fairer soldier, with ginger curls sticking out from under a stocking cap, threw a card down and declared the game over.

  “How do you do it, Boris?” asked the darker, handsomer soldier with a trim beard. “How do you always win?”

  “You let me.”

  “I let you? How do I let you?”

  “Because, Nikita, you play cards so badly, you invite defeat. You never have a strategy.”

  “Maybe I wanted the game to be over,” Nikita said, inching a hand suggestively up Boris’s thigh. “Maybe that’s my strategy.”

  When his hand made it high enough, Boris grabbed it and pressed it to his crotch.

  Nikita laughed. “You’re already hard!”

  “Maybe that’s my strategy!”

  Dr. Ustinov moved to where he could be seen in the door’s narrow band of light and cleared his throat.

  Both soldiers instantly sat upright.

  Nikita asked, “What do you want?”

  “To cross the border, of course.”

  “The border’s closed.”

  “It’s never supposed to be closed here. Has something happened?”

  “Yeah, something has happened,” Boris grumbled. “It’s too fucking cold to stand outside and check your bags. That is, if someone is stupid enough to be out in this weather.”

  “I guess that would be me.”

  “What’s to guess?” Boris gathered the cards to shuffle them. “You’ll have to come back in the morning.”

  “But the bus has already gone. You can’t expect me to spend all night waiting outside. You said yourself, it’s too cold.” Sergej made a point of looking at the shack’s floor. “Can I can sleep in here? I’m skinny so I don’t need much space. Ha! And with three of us, the place will be warmer.”

  The two soldiers exchanged a look: they had expectations for the evening that didn’t include an old geezer sleeping on their floor.

  “We’re warm enough, grandpa. We don’t need your gas.” Nikita pushed back his chair and joined Sergej outside. “Put your suitcases on that long table and show
me what you have.”

  Sergej lifted his suitcases onto a high table with a pitched roof sheltering it and handed the soldier his documents. “My ID and invoices. I sell lipsticks.” He grins adding, “I try to make the girls pretty.”

  “With those teeth, grandpa, you could be forging wedding rings! You haven’t crossed here before, have you? I’d recognize that ugly mug.”

  “It’s my first time. I have a new customer in Białystok.”

  “Come to think of it, I remember someone who looked the same as you. He was tall like you, too, and crossed a month, maybe six weeks ago. Where are you from?” Nikita asked while flipping back through Sergej’s passport.

  “Kosmonovo.”

  “Yeah, so was this guy, I think. We thought he said he was a kosmonaut. They must grow ’em ugly in Kosmonaut City, or do you all have the same father?” He laughed at his own joke and handed back the documents.

  “I feel sorry for you boys,” Sergej remarked, tucking his papers away. “I know how cold and bored you can get.”

  “Sure you do, grandpa.”

  “I was a border guard once,” he lied.

  “Is that what made you so ugly?”

  “I was never too ugly for someone on a cold night. Men have to find a way to keep warm.”

  “I’d be careful what you’re implying, grandpa. You might talk yourself into spending the night out in the cold.”

  “Well, if the first way doesn’t work, here’s a second way that’s sometimes more reliable.” Sergej offered Nikita one of his flasks of vodka.

  The soldier twisted it open and greedily took a couple of swallows. “You must be thirsty.”

  “We’ve had nothing but water for three days.”

  “When I was wearing army boots, I always made sure that I had vodka.”

  “In your day, grandpa, they still paid soldiers and you could afford to buy it. The army’s been runnin’ on empty for a while.” Nikita swigged from the flask again and tried to hand it back.