Winter Warning

by Jerome Charyn

  “Bull,” Isaac said, “you can’t arrest him. You’re not a peace officer. You’re my vice president.”

  “I was deputized,” the Bull said. “And I have a warrant for his arrest. He can’t fuck us over like that. He raided a federal facility.”

  “But it’s futile,” Isaac said. “I’ll pardon him.”

  “Not until he’s been arraigned. You can’t interrupt due process.”

  “Yes, I can,” Isaac said.

  He walloped the Bull as hard as he could with his bare knuckles. Bull Latham shook off the blow, wiping the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, while his eyes darted with a fierce agility.

  His ninjas stood there utterly frozen.

  “Bull,” Isaac muttered, “I’m the general’s guest. I won’t dishonor him.”

  And then he realized something. If mortality had to be measured, Isaac was a safer bet. Tollhouse wouldn’t survive on this mountain. His own mercs might have already been recruited to kill him. So he decided to let Bull Latham have his moment of glory and grab the renegade general. But he shouldn’t have been so magnanimous with the general’s skin. He’d been concentrating on his own navel and had missed the sheen in Tollhouse’s pale eyes. There was no sign of surrender in the ruts on his face. He didn’t have to move about like a leaping candle. Isaac hadn’t seen past Tollhouse’s magnificent camouflage, and neither had the Bull.

  The camp wasn’t deserted at all. The doors of the cabins and outhouses opened with their own quiet steel, and Tollhouse’s mercs appeared. They weren’t dressed as ninjas, like the Bull’s circus soldiers. They looked wild and mean in their windbreakers, men on their last mission. Their faces were marked—they were all wearing tattoos. Had Viktor gone across the entire camp with his wooden box, initiating these soldiers into the rituals of some surreal Siberia? These weren’t common mercenaries, soldiers for hire. They were werewolves in war paint, with machine pistols and sticks of dynamite.

  The Bull must have grasped their heartlessness, and glimpsed his own human frailty.

  “Stand down,” he told his ninjas and Matt Malloy’s company of Secret Service agents. “We’ll catch you another time, General,” he said with a sneer. “You can’t make war on the United States.”

  “I just did,” Tollhouse said.

  “Mr. President,” the Bull muttered, “are you coming down with us?”

  “No, Bull. I’ll leave you to make your own grand exit. You’re damn good at it.”

  And the Bull went away with his armed caravan.

  “General,” Isaac said, “you just lost your sanctuary. You can’t stop the Bull once he has a stick up his ass. He’ll be back.”

  “Maybe—maybe not.”

  The general kissed Isaac on the cheek, kissed the Big Guy’s entire retinue. He’d find some other hinterland, or remain on this mountain. He wouldn’t starve. He belonged to the Sons of Rossiya.

  Isaac felt gloomy as he marched away from the cabins. He could hear that purl of water again. And that’s when he stumbled upon a geyser at the base of Shangri-La, shooting jets of bubbly water into the air in a curtain of steam, like a smoke bomb. He cupped his hands and drank from the geyser; the water tasted sulfurous yet sweet. He grew giddy as he approached the colonel’s gondola. He could have sworn that a whitetail had come prancing out of the woods. Isaac blinked, and the whitetail was gone. The wind blew across the winter pines; the trees swayed with their own somber call. He boarded Marine One with his retinue. He sat in his king’s chair and fell into a clotted sleep, dreamt of his own destruction. Sarah had to wake him with a forceful tug of her arm.

  “You were crying, Mr. President. I was worried.”

  Could he tell her that he was reciting “cafeteria kaddish”—a secular prayer—for his own ragged residency at the White House? Who would have believed him? Not one damn soul.

  8

  Renata Swallow, the doyenne of Washington’s Cave Dwellers, who was still in her thirties and much more voluptuous than the other Queen Bees, was having lunch with her Swiss banker at the Salamander Club near Dupont Circle. Her late husband, Arthur Swallow, she would sadly learn upon his death, was something of a swindler and had systematically looted her inheritance and emptied their joint accounts. Renata was left with very little—a mansion in Georgetown with a lien on it, a Florentine villa in disrepair, a farm in the South of France that was bleeding cash, servants whose salaries hadn’t been paid, a yacht that sank into the Potomac, etc. The Swiss banker, Pierre, assured her that she had enough liquid assets to keep her afloat for another sixteen months. It was Pierre’s bank that looked after all her bills.

  “And what then, Pierrot?”

  “Ah, Renata darling, we downsize and sell, sell, sell.”

  “Will I lose my house on Orchard Lane?”

  “We’ll finesse,” the banker said. “It’s a duelist’s art, you know. We thrust and parry and see where the blood lies.”

  “Whose blood?” she asked.

  And Pierre laughed, stroking his silver cufflinks. “There’s always the maître.”

  “I wouldn’t want to borrow from him.”

  “We’re all in his debt,” the banker said.

  “I won’t be his mule again—it’s undignified. I’m a Republican Party princess.”

  “But you wear his tattoo,” the banker said.

  “That doesn’t mean he owns me.”

  “But he asks nothing of you,” the banker said.

  “He asks—with his big eyes.”

  “Well, have creditors been knocking at your door?”

  “Pierrot, if he threatens the locals, I’ll be erased from the Green Book and lose my table at this club.”

  “He never threatens, Renata. That’s not his style.”

  “Yes,” she said. “He cuts your throat with a silk cord, and it doesn’t leave a mark.”

  “Don’t exaggerate,” the banker said. “There have been no mortalities—none that I know of.”

  “But I could be the first one. My body will be found in the C&O Canal, stuffed with the maître’s little ink bottles.”

  “You’re being morbid, darling. Viktor’s asked a few favors of you.”

  Pierre was as adroit as a professional pickpocket. He handed her an envelope stuffed with cash. The envelope slid like a fat glove into Renata’s purse. There must have been ten thousand in that sack. She could neigh like a high-strung horse, but Renata was getting a regular allowance from the besprizornye, with Pierrot as the conduit.

  “I can’t sink the Republican Party for Viktor’s sake,” she said.

  “But you’ve done nothing wrong. He’s contributed millions to the National Committee.”

  “That’s the problem. His millions are in my name. I sign the checks, and all the while I’m unraveling.”

  “But he’ll save you,” the banker said, “one stitch at a time.”

  And she’d have to pay for each stitch with her blood. Yet she was attached to the maître, even if he undermined all her traditions and values. Renata wouldn’t have been surprised if he ended up owning shares in the Salamander Club. He infiltrated, perverted, possessed. Viktor grew out of his own whirlwind. Werewolves, that’s what they called themselves, these besprizornye, rootless boys and men who smothered everything Renata believed in. She was old-line, and the besprizornye had no line at all. They dressed in silken suits from some Jewish tailor along the Arbat. They probably owned half of Moscow. They sucked up Paris and London like a colony of anteaters. Nothing was ever written in their own name. There were Swiss banks and holding companies, even publishing houses. Their emblem was an upside down rose. It must have had every sort of meaning in the tundra, in the ghostly prison camps that had given birth to them. But their pakhan was a pauper on paper. His sole possessions were that silken suit—velvet, really—and a paint box with his medieval instruments and inks.

  Yet he must have had a mind for numbers, carried his great fortune around in his head. But why was he suddenly interested in old-
line Washington? What could the Cave Dwellers mean to an artist who had to shed your blood, slice into your skin, to create his masterpieces? He was a vulture—or a vampire, with his dark Russian eyes. He was the most delicate lover she’d ever had. No one had Viktor’s touch, despite the blood, ink, and pigment imbedded in his fingernails. Still, death hovered over him somehow—death was his constant companion and pal.

  “Pierrot,” she said, “he can’t crash into the Republican Party like a safecracker. It’s immoral.”

  “He asks nothing,” the banker said.

  “But Viktor’s nothing has its own weight. Nothing doesn’t exist for him.”

  “Darling,” the banker said, “your own husband bankrupted you. And the maître is helping you crawl out of that hole.”

  She should have been more attentive to her surroundings. The one thing the maître had taught her was vigilance—and paranoia. He couldn’t afford to advertise wherever he was. That’s why he had a half dozen pieds-à-terre and no permanent address.

  Why didn’t she recognize a single creature at the tables around her? Renata knew everyone at the Salamander Club. Had her own little descent into crime crippled her, robbed Renata of all her intuition? And then this stranger had the nerve to cop a chair and sit down next to the Republican princess and her banker. This stranger was Sidel.

  “Sorry, Renata. You wouldn’t answer any of my calls. And so I had to find you at your favorite canteen.”

  And he introduced himself to Pierre.

  “Hello. I’m the president of the United States.”

  “Stop showing off,” Renata said. “This is Pierrot, my Swiss banker.”

  “From Basel?” Isaac asked.

  Pierre nodded, and Isaac knew in his own heart’s blood that this was the banker who had started the lottery, or at least had conspired to start it. This fuck wished him dead and was also keeping him alive. That was the double edge of currency, if the rate of exchange was measured in spoons of blood—Isaac’s blood.

  He looked at the banker’s silver cufflinks.

  “Are you carrying your passport, Monsieur?”

  The banker nodded again.

  “Give,” Isaac said. He scrutinized the passport—Pierre François Marie de Robespierre, born in Basel. Isaac could have pinched it, but why bother? Sarah Rogers was at the next table, and she could prepare a composite of the banker from her computers at Quantico. So he returned the passport and said, “Please, Monsieur, I have important business to discuss with Madam Swallow.”

  “This is outrageous,” Renata said. “Pierrot hasn’t finished his avocado salad. We’re drinking Pinot Noir. I’ll have the manager chuck you and your entire menagerie out on your heels. Wendell—”

  “Please,” Isaac said. “Wendell is in the closet.”

  “You’re a bunch of hooligans,” Renata said.

  “Indeed, we are. And it feels nice. We’ve captured the Salamander Club. It’s our little fort.”

  He glared once at Pierrot, who got up, pecked Renata once on the cheek, and walked out. Isaac sat down in the banker’s chair and picked at his avocado salad.

  “You’re vile,” Renata said.

  “I want to see your tattoo.”

  She laughed in Isaac’s face. “It’s on my bottom. And we’re not that intimate. Or are you planning to play the Neanderthal, Mr. President—and carry me upstairs to one of the private rooms? I’ve heard about your Bronx brutality.”

  “I’m from the Lower East Side,” Isaac said. “And I couldn’t carry you very far, not at my age. I’d get a hernia.”

  Her laughter was less harsh. She almost felt sorry for that bumbling bear of a man. The Cave Dwellers had rubbed him out of their vocabulary long before he arrived in Washington. He had no political grace. He walked around with a pistol in his pants. He had no friends. He was feuding with the Democrats. He was isolated, all alone, in a town that still traded on its Southern elegance. Lincoln had been an outcast with his mad wife. And Sidel was even more of an outcast.

  “You’re the Queen Bee,” Isaac said. “You have Viktor’s stamp of approval—a rose or something else on your ass. How can I meet him?”

  “Well, you just ruined your chances,” she said. “You shouldn’t have insulted Pierrot. He’s been handing me packets of money from the maître. You and your little bloodhounds should be following him. Why did you lock Wendell in the closet?”

  “Because he said I had no business being here. I could have declared this club a firetrap and kidnapped you.”

  “You’re not the mayor of Washington—not yet.”

  But she was warming to the clumsy bear despite herself. He was as madcap and whimsical as the maître, who always seemed to arrive out of nowhere, with some tiny gift—a trinket from a toyshop in Sochi, a tin lantern from Cracow, a Gypsy heirloom made of marled glass.

  “Did you know that Pierre and his banker friends in Basel have taken out a lottery on your life? I hold six or seven lottery tickets. Pierrot says it’s a very good investment. I have an excellent chance to collect.”

  She had a sudden urge to undress for this besprizoryne from the wilds of Manhattan, display the upside down rose that Viktor had painted on her bottom, and reveal it to Sidel before he croaked.

  “You’ll miss me, Renata. Bull Latham will push much harder into Republican country. He’ll bring down the Cave Dwellers in his wake. Tell me, does Viktor talk about Balanchine with you, is he a balletomane?”

  Isaac should never have broached this subject with the Queen Bee. Her face softened in the pearly light of the Salamander Club.

  “My poor Mr. President,” she said in the subtle glow of the Salamander’s chandeliers. “The maître saw Balanchine in his last performance—as Don Quixote. Balanchine wore a full suit of armor. He hopped around his Dulcinea for three hours, and died on stage—in the performance.”

  Isaac panicked. He had never heard of the ballet master performing in his own ballet. Don Quixote, in a suit of armor, like Isaac’s armored vest.

  “Balanchine was in love with the ballerina. You couldn’t possibly recall her name. And I won’t soil it by mentioning who she was. He worked on Don Quixote for years, but no matter how much he shortened it, the ballet was still three hours. Viktor was enthralled. He couldn’t take his eyes off the old man with a wisp of a beard glued on tight, and shivering in front of his Dulcinea . . . but you couldn’t comprehend the pathos of it with your policeman’s mentality.”

  She got up from the table, but she glued herself to Sidel for another moment. “I never bet against you with those tickets. I didn’t want you to disappear like that—with a puff. But Pierrot said my little piece of the pie was worth a small fortune. And I’m a widow in serious debt.”

  She walked right past Isaac and couldn’t find Wendell or any of the waiters. That wild boy had stripped the Salamander clean. She stepped out onto Massachusetts Avenue a bit forlorn as she watched the Lincoln Continentals drive along Embassy Row. She’d lost her chauffeur in the big money spill after her husband’s fatal heart attack. She lost her servants one by one, even her skeletal staff on Orchard Lane, and had seen the last of her own trusted laundress.

  Another chauffeur suddenly appeared in a Lincoln Continental. It puzzled her until she saw a tattoo on the chauffeur’s knuckles and realized that this bounty had come from Viktor, her own wild boy.

  He was wearing a silken suit, like the other besprizoryne, and some kind of a military cap, like a general who’d rid himself of his army.

  “Please, Little Mother, get into car.”

  She didn’t argue. She was still a Republican princess, after all. When she opened her eyes, she was on Orchard Lane. She couldn’t even tell if her key would fit the lock. Her husband’s creditors had put a lien on Orchard Lane, with a notice from the county clerk stuck to the front door. But the chauffeur, who was called Arkady, scraped off the notice and all its stubborn glue with a chisel. He had his own key and let Renata in. But she shouldn’t have been startled. Her husband’s
bankers had all abandoned her.

  Pierrot had been a gift from Viktor, with all the little “liens” that went with her own private banker in Basel. There was a rose on the foyer table, turned upside down, like the tattoo on her rump. She opened the closet, and inside was a rust-colored velvet suit and a black shirt. She realized that Orchard Lane was now one more of Viktor’s pieds-à-terre.

  She dialed a number that Viktor had given her. She couldn’t recognize the area and country codes. It was her only way to get in touch with him. The message on the answering machine was always in a woman’s throaty voice.

  This is Siberian Apparel Company. Please leave name and number and brief message.

  “Hello,” she said, feeling like a secret agent, or a high-class whore. “This is the Widow. Please have the kindness to tell the Apparel Company”—Viktor—“that the Bald Man”—Sidel—“would like to see him . . .”

  She hung up the phone with a dizzying sense of triumph and defeat. She’d become addicted to this strange new life, as the Queen Bee of the besprizornye. A penniless Cave Dweller with clumps of cash, she could bribe Republican politicos to build a vast wall around the White House, neutralize what little power Sidel had left, devour him one toe at a time. That was a besprizornye trademark. But Renata didn’t believe in it somehow. Viktor could never understand these politicos, who would nod yes, yes, yes, and disappear with the money stuffed in their shoes.

  What if she were wrong? Perhaps Viktor knew he was lulling Republican lawmakers to sleep with the magical aroma of money. Who could really read his mind?

  9

  This was a very different Sidel. The Big Guy was vetoing bill after bill, and Congress couldn’t seem to override his vetoes. He lambasted Republicans and Democrats alike and revealed a political savvy he didn’t have before. “Ladies and gents, either you put back provisions for food stamps and public housing, or I won’t sign shit.” The Big Guy also watched as Soviet borders began to crumble. His generals wanted him to rattle his sabers at the Soviets.