by Greg Wilson
“How old is she?”
Nikolai turned towards the woman at the wheel.
Kelly flung him a glance. “Your daughter?”
For a moment he had to think. ‘Twelve. Almost thirteen.”
Hartman’s daughter smiled. ‘That’s a nice age.” They were speeding south on Highway 87, the sky in the distance alight with the city’s glow. “And her name is Larisa?”
He had only said it once. It surprised him that she remembered. “Yes. Her name is Larisa,” he repeated quietly.
They left another mile behind in silence. Kelly was holding the speed twenty above the limit, winding the big sedan confidently in and out of the flow.
Nikolai searched for something to say. “You drive well.”
The glow from the dash caught the lift of her cheeks. ‘Thanks. To tell you the truth I don’t drive at all.” She hooked a look towards him. “I’m not allowed to. I’ve lost my license twice already for speeding. If the cops pick me up now I’m gone.” She gave a wry smile. “The fact that it’s a stolen car probably won’t help, either.” She swung her gaze back to the road. Let another minute pass.
“My father is a good man, Nikolai.”
He looked at her. Saw her lips roll together.
“What he told you tonight is the truth. The only reason he let you down back in Russia is because his own people double-crossed him.” She drew a breath. “I know it means nothing compared with what you must have been through, but it’s haunted him ever since. He’s made a lot of enemies trying to do what he thinks is right because of that.” She pulled a breath. “Tonight was the fourth time they’ve tried to kill him.”
Nikolai swung aside, staring. “Ivankov?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think it’s just been him. There are plenty of others he’s upset. Two occasions he’s tried to pass off as accidents. I always had my doubts but not any longer. This was the worst. You saw that for yourself.” She shook her head again, her voice incredulous. “I just don’t believe these people.” Nikolai’s mouth lifted in a bitter smile. Not you people. These people. At least she acknowledged the difference. He sighed. Fell back against the seat.
“It takes a Russian to understand a Russian.”
They were on a straight stretch of highway. Nothing in front. The speedometer needle rose steadily towards the top of the dial. Kelly turned and stared at him.
“What the fuck kind of excuse is being Russian?”
His eyes met hers. “No kind of excuse. Just a reality. A fact. The way things are. You can take from a people only for so long. In the end some of them will rebel. Not all, but some. One day they begin to question why someone else should have so much more than they do and then they work out that there is no reason. No reason at all. So they start studying the people who have more, then after a while they work out how they got it and it occurs to them that all they have to do is copy the formula. Just do the same thing. In the end it’s all just a game. Whoever is the most ruthless wins. Then the game starts to catch on and pretty soon everyone is playing it.”
Kelly shot him a querulous glance. He took it in. Turned to her slowly.
“You don’t have to be Russian. This man, Malcolm Powell. Is he Russian?”
She held his gaze for a moment as the comprehension settled. When she turned back to the windshield she thought of her father. The evidence against Powell and Ivankov destroyed in the ruins of his house.
“And so now they win again,” she breathed.
A quiet smile creased Nikolai’s face. “Maybe,” he said. “And maybe not.”
At least it wasn’t as hot now that the sun had gone down.
Larisa made her way along the crowded street, past the shopfronts and the doorways and the restaurants and the clubs with their flashing, pulsing lights and the muscled men in black T-shirts who hung around their entrances. A train rolled by on the elevated track overhead, startling her, the pavement shaking, the carriages rattling above her as it passed. She had come this way with her father just a few days before but now, when she looked around her, everything seemed foreign. Perhaps it was because it was night. People towering above her. Weaving around her. Strange, questioning faces glancing down as they passed, their features distorted in the sea of colored light. She moved on, trying to ignore them, searching the skyline instead, looking for the big wheel, finding it, then losing it as she tracked around the obstacles in her path. A hundred yards on she saw it again, ahead and to the left in the distance, its lights swooping around in a giant arc. She fixed it in her sights, her legs moving faster, determined this time not to let it go.
She was on unfamiliar territory now, beyond the point where she and her father had turned off towards the beach. It was darker here. There were fewer shops and fewer people and the pavement was narrower, lined tight with parked cars, girls in high heels and short tight dresses standing around in doorways, grinning men propped against fenders, swigging from beer cans and bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. Someone called out to her and she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She shivered and pulled away, locking her fingers around the strap of the bag, pressing it tight beneath her arm, quickening her pace then breaking into a run, racing towards the light ahead.
When the main street came to a sudden stop she swung left towards the ocean. She was getting nearer to the wheel now, she could see it clearly in the distance, scooping in a circle through the charcoal sky. She turned right again, running past a park and a huge building with a massive sign saying it was an aquarium, then past a vacant lot beneath the rail track that seemed to go on forever, the chain-wire fence that lined it sliding behind her in a blur.
The lights ahead were growing brighter and she could hear music now. Organ music, curious and happy like a fairground. Like Gorky Park.
Coming up on her right was a building that looked like a railway station. She felt safer here. She began to slow down, falling to a gradual stop, bending forward and propping her hands against her knees, heaving for breath.
From this point on the void beneath the railway tracks had been closed in to form a long row of sheds, converted to shops and market stalls selling flowers and second-hand furniture and cheap watches and comic books and everything between. Larisa walked past them her chest heaving. She could have been in Moscow… at Kievskaya or Leningrad Station or anywhere like that. The same stalls. The same goods. The same babushkas sitting on their stools, waiting patiently for their next customer to come along, while all around them crazy, wild-eyed young hustlers, too impatient to wait, darted from one passer-by to the next, desperately working the crowds.
A signpost fixed to the brickwork between two stalls told her she was on a street named Surf Avenue. She walked on a little, her shoulders still heaving, then made her way to the curb. Waited for a break in the traffic then crossed over to the other side, slipping into one of the brightly lit laneways that ran down to the beach.
She was in a crazy world now. Bright lights and blaring music and laughter and howls of delighted terror trailing from the roller-coasters that swept past at either side. Banners and colored hoardings. Pink and yellow and blue and green with strange paintings and funny lettering. No Russian here; only English. Or was it American. Her head scrolled from one side to the other, her eyes trailing across the signs.
Quik Dogs! Cold Beer! Cotton Candy.
Sideshows by the Seashore. Freaks, Wonders & Human Curiosities… They’re real. They’re here! They’re alive!
To the right, on a platform in front of a red curtain, a skinny man in a light blue suit and a straw hat was calling into a microphone, a tiny, near naked man half Larisa’s height strutting around beside him, glaring and flexing his enormous muscles at the crowd. The amplified words traced past her in a blur as she turned. On the stand opposite, two pale, thin girls in short black dresses, with nose studs and bleached blonde hair, were cradling a huge yellow snake of some kind, letting it slither across their shoulders and around their necks.
Larisa shuddered a
nd picked up her pace, clutching the bag to her side, starting to run again, forward towards the place where the huge wheel stood still, towering above the boardwalk, its brightly painted carriages swaying in the air.
“Here!” Nikolai shouted. “This is it! Turn right.”
Kelly swung the Jaguar beneath the elevated rail line, winding it around a cluster of startled pedestrians, straightening up and pushing it across the intersection. To her right Nikolai was leaning forward, peering through the windshield, his eyes sweeping the street. He stabbed his finger towards a building on the left.
“There!”
Kelly slewed the car into a vacant space at the curb, leaving the tail hanging out into the street. Beside her his hand was already reaching for the door. He swung back to her as his fingers locked around the chrome catch.
“You stay here!”
She pulled the handbrake and hit the gearshift into park, throwing him a sharp look.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
He hesitated a moment then his face locked in a grimace of capitulation. He threw the door aside and leapt out, leaving it hanging open behind him. Kelly followed, struggling her seat belt aside, slamming her own door and taking off after him across the pavement and into the building. By the time they reached the fourth level she was gasping as if she had just finished the New York marathon and Nikolai was already almost a flight ahead. She clutched the balustrade and pulled a breath, put her head down and pushed herself forward again, catching up at the sixth level. He had stopped a pace away from the top of the stairs and was holding back his hand, signaling for her to stay behind. She watched, catching her breath as he traced along the corridor, coming to a stop beside the door at the end. For a moment he stood listening at the panel, his only movement the rise and fall of his chest, then his fingers fell to the handle and twisted it carefully, his wrist running to a stop against the lock. He spun the metal knob back through his fingers and twisted it again, urgently now, a second time then a third, no longer concerned about alerting anyone inside. Then before Kelly realized what was happening he was stepping back and lashing out at the door with his heel, breaking it in, kicking again and again until the timber around the lock splintered apart and the panel swung back violently on its hinges. It hit something and bounced back towards him again and he kicked it aside, pushing past it into the room.
Other doors were coming open now, partly clad figures falling out into the hall, staring at one another, at the splintered doorframe, at her. Kelly’s eyes trailed down across her torn, filthy shirt, her grime-smeared slacks, the red blistered streaks on her bare arm. She spun around, her gaze tracing the startled, questioning faces. He had told her to wait, just as Alex had told her to wait, but she couldn’t… Couldn’t wait! She was part of this now! Thrusting herself away from the staircase she stumbled forward, following Nikolai through the door.
She burst through the hallway into the apartment, her eyes sweeping across the room. On the far side, near the window a thin, dark-haired girl was drawn back behind a table, her green eyes flashing with fear. Their gaze met for a second before Kelly swung away.
The corridor was drenched with the smell of cordite. Nikolai stepped through it, his jaw set hard, the blood pulsing behind his eyes, a tight hard knot swelling inside his gut. The door to the room he and Larisa shared was hanging open, the light inside turned on. He edged towards it, his shoulders heaving with his breath, bracing himself against the horror of what he expected to find, closing his eyes and stepping forward, only half conscious of the other figure coming up behind.
When Kelly reached him Nikolai was standing in the doorway, his hands clutching the frame at either side. She stared at him and stepped in closer, her gaze tracking across his shoulder, running past him to the crumpled mess on the floor. The top cover had been stripped from the mattress on the right, exposing a jumbled mess of clothing and a pillow studded with ragged holes strewn across the sheet beneath. She watched Nikolai as he stared down at the bullet-riddled pillow, his body heaving with anxiety and the exertion of his breath. His eyes scanned the room as if he were looking for something then suddenly he froze. Pushed himself away from the door frame and stumbled forward. There was a stuffed toy of some kind resting on the second mattress. A dog-eared old teddy bear wearing a faded red vest. Nikolai scooped it up, his eyes on fire. Then he saw the handwritten note that had been lying on the bed beside it, snatched it up and scanned the lines. He drew a breath, crushed the paper in his palm, spun aside and stumbled back through the doorway, thrusting the ragged toy into Kelly’s hand as he passed, pushing her out of his way, striding back along the corridor to the main room, crossing it and taking the girl’s shoulders in his hands. Kelly followed, falling to a stop at the end of the corridor, watching.
The girl was tossing her head wildly, crying as his fingers tightened their grasp.
Nikolai’s voice seethed with fury. “Where is Sergei? Where is he?”
“I didn’t know,” the girl whimpered. “I promise you I didn’t know they would try to hurt her.”
Nikolai’s hands closed tighter, the pain of his grip reflected in her terrified face. His teeth were gritted with determination. “Where is he?”
She stared at him, her eyes tracking wildly between his. “He went after her.”
Nikolai’s hands moved to her throat. “How long?”
She grimaced as his fingers closed tighter still. Tossed her head. “Not long. Maybe five minutes.” The tears were welling in her eyes as she shook her head. “I don’t know.”
He pushed her away and she hit the wall, buckling against it, the stain of his thumbprints burning on the skin of her throat. Her words fell out in a fractured trail. “I told him! I told him he should leave you alone. I told him what I saw.” But Nikolai wasn’t listening. He was already at the door.
A crowd had begun to gather outside in the hall. Nikolai waded past the craning figures thrusting them aside. Kelly followed him, falling in behind, moving through his wake, her voice strained and insistent at his shoulder.
“Nikolai! For Christ’s sake. Tell me what’s happening.”
He swung into the staircase, moving so fast she had difficulty keeping up.
“They thought I was dead so they were going to kill Larisa as well.”
Kelly’s face twisted in a frown of disbelief. “Your daughter? They were going to kill her?” He swung into another flight, his silence providing the answer. She took off after him again, still clutching the red-vested toy bear. “Why?”
He cast a glance across his shoulder. “Because then the whole affair would be wrapped up and buried forever.”
Kelly tossed her head. “But what harm could she have possibly done.”
They reached the lobby and Nikolai pulled to a stop, turning to stare at her. “They didn’t know,” he said. “So they didn’t want to take the risk.” He blinked and drew a breath. Thrust the crumpled note into Kelly’s free hand. Her eyes scanned the words: the scrawled letters of a child.
Daddy, I’m at the big wheel. I love you. Larisa.
Her eyes rose to his. They were calm, now. Even and cool and determined. He drew a breath. “So, are you still driving?”
He sat beside her quietly, staring through the windshield as she wound the car through the maze of one way streets.
“Who is he?
Nikolai turned aside and she swung her eyes from the road to meet his glance.
“The girl in the apartment. She said, “He went after her.” Who is he?”
He shrugged. “Her husband. One of them.”
Kelly’s brow furrowed. “And he was the one who tried to kill her?”
He shrugged again. Matter of fact. “I doubt it. He wouldn’t have the guts. They would know that. But they would hold him responsible so now he has to find her.”
She drove in silence for a minute, wondering how it was possible that he could seem so detached. At least he was talking. She tried again, pushing further.
“
There was something else she said. I told him what I saw. What did she mean?”
He studied her again a moment, his face traced by the light of the dials. Turned back to his window, watching the street.
“You don’t want to know about that. You wouldn’t understand.”
This was what it must be like on the top of the world.
Larisa leaned forward and clutched the rail, her fear swept away with pure awe as the carriage swung beneath her.
She had waited beside the ticket box at the fence that separated the huge wheel from its surrounding apron for what she thought must have been almost an hour, searching the faces in the surging crowds, then she had seen the man who looked like Sergei and turned away quickly, stepping into the line, thrusting her hand into the zippered pocket of her father’s bag, searching for the money, handing over the first American money she found to the black man behind the window. He stared at it for a moment then looked at her and made a screwed up face, speaking down to her in a twisting high pitched voice.
“A thousan’ bucks! Hey, sweet thing. Ain’t you got somethin’ smaller?”
Maybe she did have; maybe she didn’t. She didn’t know. When she shook her head he rolled his white eyes, set the note aside and began counting out others into a pile beside it then pushed them across the counter and called across her shoulder.
“Next!”
She scooped the money into her hand and shoveled it into the bag, taking her ticket and moving forward, pressing in close to the couple holding hands in front.
It had been Sergei she had seen.
As she stood in line she’d seen him again, pushing through the crowd, his head craning from left to right, searching.
She had only been on a ride like this once in her life and it wasn’t really like this. It was only a quarter the size at most. This was gigantic. Unbelievably tall. Towering above her into the sky.
