“Damned straight.”
“You think you wounded it?”
Sveta pulled out a Beretta, checked its load, and then flicked the safety to the off position. She handed it to Zoe. Zoe aimed at the window where she last saw the beast, but her hands trembled.
“Be careful with that thing,” cautioned Sveta. “Make sure you shoot at it instead of me.”
Zoe ignored her and stared out through the broken train window.
“You wounded it, right?” she asked again.
“I don’t know. I shot it, but I think I only pissed it off. No blood spray. Nothing. It just kept on moving.”
Zoe was about to say something when another roar ripped through the complex. They looked at each other for a moment like two criminals wondering who the executioner would come for next. Then the train car jerked straight up in the air and spilled over sideways as she and Sveta flew about like dolls in a car crash.
Metal screeched as the train landed on its side then flipped up again and she hit her head against a seat bench. A shower of splintered wood and glass fragments fell on her like dirt shoveled into a grave. She felt the warm flow of blood in her mouth, and then darkness took away her thoughts.
Chapter Fifteen
“You going to sleep all day?”
Hauck wiped the sleep out of his eyes and felt for his pistol. The security panel lights were green, meaning his perimeter was still secure. One hand held the phone while the other curled automatically around his pistol grip as his eyelids blinked like a shutter camera as he scanned the room. He checked the phone’s caller ID.
“Are you in town?” he asked.
“Come see me where we got that stuff for your back.”
The phone went dead.
The Instructor had arrived in Detroit.
Hauck didn’t sleep well after the Ryazan prison incident. The KGB hardliners never gave up acquiring their targets. Especially one as important as Hauck. He could change his name, but eventually they would find him. The KGB could trade in its acronym for a new one, but they were the same people as before, and they never quit. So people like him were never really safe again.
Although some thought that targets were reacquired at four o’clock in the morning when a person’s responses were at their least efficient, the truth was that they could seize you anytime day or night. Asleep or awake. And you never really knew when they would come for you, which is why people hunted by the secret police never, ever slept well until it was permanent.
He stood, stretched, and looked around his apartment again. Something was bothering him. Not a nuance, not a possibility, but something right in front of him that he was missing. Hauck was never nervous, but he was always careful, which was why he was still alive. Though after Drogol’s escape the night before, Hauck didn’t feel careful enough. Bullets that hit their target but did nothing. A raging beast that seemed to flicker in and out of reality. For perhaps the first time in his life, Hauck wondered if his intellect was up to the job.
He’d always been obsessed with tracking Drogol to ground. Kill him with silver bullets or holy water or whatever it took. It’d never occurred to him that Drogol and his beast might be immune to everything. If that was true, then Yuri was right. Universal Pictures and Lon Chaney had got it seriously wrong.
He checked in with Evgeny and Yuri. Nothing new except from the house video. Too complicated to go into over the phone, but Yuri would download a file when he was finished checking and double-checking what he had found. Then Hauck knew what was nagging at his brain even before he had his first coffee.
“Yuri,” he said.
“Yeah, boss?”
“I want you to send me the name of Evgeny’s spotter and every detail we have on him. Make him a heuristic target. Go deep on him, and do it fast as you can.”
“He was vetted on the front end, boss,” protested Yuri.
“Was he?”
“Course he was. It was a thorough probe.”
“Are you sure the man you vetted is the same man who spotted for Evgeny last night?”‘
Silence for a moment.
“Has to be. But you’re saying what?”
“That has to be isn’t a good enough answer,” growled Hauck.
“I’m on it,” said Yuri. “But what tipped you?”
“Later. I’m on my way to see someone.”
“You need backup?”
“I am backup,” said Hauck, and then clicked off.
Next he showered, dressed, had a quick coffee and a microwaved breakfast, then turned on his security system and took his private elevator to the underground garage. The walk from the elevator to his car was always the most difficult for him to endure. No matter how much security electronics or staff he deployed, he never quite felt secure. It was part training, part temperament, and part law of averages. Eventually, somebody always got through. That meant in the end he had to take care of himself.
He chose a different car, a gray Ford Focus to blend in a little with the traffic. On the dashboard screen he brought up images of the surrounding buildings and streets before he initiated the overhead door opening. Five minutes later, he was satisfied that the surrounding streets looked safe. That was the problem, though, wasn’t it? You could check and look, examine and analyze, but you never knew what was going to happen until you went out the door, and you eventually had to go outside. As the metal panels folded up silently into their overhead space, he wondered what it would be like to see a shoulder-fired rocket screeching toward him from across the street.
*****
It was a tired gray building washed old and white, rich with delicate concrete scrolls edging a once elegant design. In an otherwise commonplace neighborhood of liquor stores, laundromats and loud graffiti, it seemed to Hauck like an initialed cravat found lying in a second hand clothing store.
Hauck checked the neighborhood carefully before parking two blocks away. He saw nothing suspicious but the city itself. That a city once so great and powerful could be so wrapped in such decadent decline disgusted him. A glance overhead at the morning sky caused him to lower his eyes. Orange-brown smoke puffed up toward the clouds. Hauck grimaced at the idea that a city he once admired had become little more than an acid rain production factory.
When he arrived at his destination, Hauck saw that the Red Calibri lettering on the front door’s greasy glass was still visible through the iron bars. It read Traxler’s Bibliotheca. Rare books and manuscripts buried under the rubble of a twenty-first century Oz whose city used to drive the world.
The cracked ceramic buzzer screwed tightly to the doorframe looked as though it hadn’t been touched in decades. When he pressed it, he saw dusty grime on the fingertip of his leather glove. The P-64 9 mm. tucked in his navy pea coat pocket was heavy as his past. It wouldn’t be any use against the Instructor anyway. He’d be dead before he tried to use it. He consoled himself with the idea that it was for emergencies, for the unexpected. For Anna Kazokova’s squalid little criminals since he now assumed that it would be totally useless against Drogol.
A hidden speaker crackled to life.
“Come on in. We got coffee.”
The Instructor’s voice was edged with nervous energy, and Hauck immediately began to worry that he’d made a mistake.
A metallic click as the door unlocked. Neither the Instructor nor Traxler would wonder whether he was alone. Traxler was as bad if not worse than he was himself. The entire street would be wired with enough high tech micro-cameras to start an electronics store. The old man would have enough computing power locked away for facial recognition programs to sweep the streets, looking for threats. Traxler had spent enough time in prison that he didn’t plan on going back.
Hauck entered a vestibule and cleaned his shoes on a thick mat.
A thin, smoky light lit streams of dust motes that swarmed through the two story interior like tiny bees hunting honey. Stacks of books ringed the room in concentric circles like castle walls buttressed by towering
mahogany bookshelves. Scattered throughout the room were browsing tables, straight-backed chairs and green glass banker lamps.
It was uncomfortably silent.
He stood out in the open, waiting to meet the most dangerous man he had ever known, wondering if even he would be up to the task of killing Drogol.
From behind a book stack, Rudolph Traxler suddenly appeared, dressed in a dark suit and an open-necked blue shirt. His moustache a thin line above his lips, his gray hair perfectly cut and eyes bright as though he were accepting an Oscar.
“Ah,” he said, “so nice to see you again, my friend.”
Traxler was tall and fit looking for his seventy-six years, and he walked with a confident stride.
“The feeling is mutual,” said Hauck.
“Good, then I’ll take your pistol, if you don’t mind.”
It was impossible to know where the sensors were, but walking into Traxler’s Bibliotheca was like walking through an airport scanner.
“Certainly,” said Hauck, and he handed over his pistol.
When the old man pocketed it, he reached out again and shook Hauck’s hand. He leaned forward slightly and said, “He’s in a good mood.”
“I was afraid of that,” said Hauck.
“Whatever it is you’ve brought him here for has him excited like the old days.”
“I’m afraid it’s gotten even more complicated.”
Traxler raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Well, then, let’s not keep him waiting. Come with me.”
They wound through the stacks until they came to a windowless office with a simple desk and stacks of books piled high on it, as though it were a researcher’s table. Traxler waited for Hauck to join him inside, and then closed the door behind them. The old man smiled, then reached in his pocket. Moments later, the entire office descended.
It was a simple yet effective trick. As the office went down, another office exactly like the one they had entered lowered into position to displace the first. The entire building was a maze of hidden doors, rooms, hydraulics, sensors and electromagnetic locks. Hauck thought of it more as a machine than a building. It was a reflection of Traxler’s mind, the way he concealed the complicated within the simple.
When they reached bottom, the door opened into an underground workshop and storage area replete with rows of automatic rifles, pistols, explosive, flame throwers and gas canisters. It was like an underground gun and knife show for elite clients.
At a table in the middle of the room stood a short man with a thick neck and powerful shoulders examining a sniper rifle. He tested the weight and then hefted it into the air as though about to fire a round into the ceiling. With a snort, he laid it back on the table, and then looked up at Traxler.
“This new stuff,” he said, “it’s like carrying nothing. This thing’s got no weight. I love it. I love all of this space-age plastics bullshit. How you doing Hauck? You look like you ain’t been sleeping. You got to get some sleep. Look at me, I’m in my eighties and I move like a teenager.”
“You do at that,” said Hauck.
“Come here, give me a hug,” said the Instructor.
“Pardon?”
“I’m shitting you. You try to hug me and I’ll kick your ass. Rudolph, you got any more coffee?”
“I can make another pot.”
“Yeah, do it. Hauck here looks like he’s going to fall asleep if we don’t pump some caffeine in him.”
Traxler walked away, leaving the Instructor and his pupil alone.
“So this is no bullshit, right? This thing in the video, I mean.”
“No.”
“Fuck me,” said the Instructor.
“And there’s more. Worse. I have some new video footage to show you when Rudolph returns.”
“Video? You mean you’re shooting motion pictures of this thing but you’re not shooting it like for real?”
“We’ve tried,” said Hauck.
“Is that so? What does that mean? Evgeny’s gone blind?”
“No.”
“Spotter’s drunk?”
“I wish,” said Hauck irritably.
“This just gets better and better,” said the Instructor, and then he lifted his thick arms in front of him, rubbed the palms of his hands together and smiled. Hauck shuddered involuntarily.
*****
“Here,” said Hauck, pointing at the computer screen on one of Traxler’s tables.
“That’s not possible,” said Traxler. “Some kind of video anomaly, perhaps.”
The Instructor stood to Hauck’s right. He was only slightly taller than Hauck, who was sitting down.
“Show me that again,” he said.
Hauck did so.
“It’s not an anomaly,” said Hauck. “It’s real. It takes the impact and isn’t so much as knocked off balance.”
The Instructor ran a hand over the top of his shaved head.
“This ain’t good,” he said. “It’s like he’s made of Kevlar.”
“Impossible,” said Traxler. “Movie stuff.”
“The beast himself is only barely possible,” said Hauck.
“Still,” said the Instructor, “anything can be killed. You try gas yet?”
Hauck stared at him.
“Gas?”
“Yeah, so there’s nothing to stop, you know? It’s got to breathe, for fuck’s sake. It’s got a nose, doesn’t it? How about we hit it pretty heavy with something like knockout gas, then cut off its head while it’s out. You think about that?”
“No,” admitted Hauck.
“That’s why you pay me the big bucks,” grinned the Instructor.
“It might work,” said Traxler. “But I have a question. What exactly is this thing? I admit it looks like a gigantic wolf on two legs, but there’s something vaguely … alien about it.”
Hauck took in the thought slowly, and then nodded.
It did indeed.
For the first time since last night, he wondered if Zoe and Sveta were still alive.
Chapter Sixteen
Sveta woke to a pounding headache.
She was lying on a cot, staring face up at a plank wood ceiling. The room was lit with the same golden glow she remembered from the underground complex. It was somehow reassuring. Zoe lay on a cot nearby, her head bandaged and her left arm in a makeshift sling. Drafting tables covered with papers and stacked with books were scattered about the large room. There was only one window, as though she had woken up in a prison. Drogol stood looking down at her.
“No,” he said gently, “do not get up. Rest. You are badly bruised, and you have broken three fingers.”
Sveta sat up quickly, but the blood seemed to drain from her head and she dropped back down to the mattress.
Drogol leaned down and placed a bandaged hand against her chest.
“Rest, I tell you. You have been through much and more lies ahead of us all.”
“Which ones?” asked Sveta.
“Which ones what?”
“Which fingers?”
Drogol appeared confused.
“Which fingers are broken?”
“Ah, those of your right hand.”
She closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of relief.
“I shoot best left handed.”
When she opened her eyes again, her vision cleared and she saw to her surprise that his face was battered and an ugly cut stitched across his jaw. He seemed to lean to one side, as though it were painful to put weight on his right leg.
Drogol’s face twisted in pain for a moment, and then he regained control.
“Forgive me,” he said hesitantly. “More and more I have less and less control. And there is so little time before I have no control left at all. The beast will then come when it wills, and I fear I will never see this world again.”
“What is that thing?”
He looked away in shame, put his hands behind his back and began to pace back and forth. When he reached his hand up toward the ceiling once, she thou
ght he was about to answer her, but he only shook his head and continued to pace. After a moment, he whirled awkwardly on one leg and stopped before her.
“Look at me,” he demanded. “Who do you see? What do you see?”
She thought before answering.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look at me. Really look at me. Use your heart. What do you feel?”
The painful urgency in his voice confused her. His words were alive with angry embarrassment. He seemed to pulse with a nervous, desperate energy.
“I see, I think, a tortured man.”
His head bobbed up and down enthusiastically, a teacher urging his star pupil onward.
“Go on,” he said.
“I see a man,” she said hesitantly, “a man who does not fit well with this time.”
“Good, good. This underground laboratory is dedicated to the sorcery of the very man who has cursed me these so many years. I am a man alone looking for salvation while hidden from the rest of the world within the genius of my tormentor.”
Sveta felt dizzy. The agony and anger of Drogol’s words seemed to press her hard against the mattress. She had no idea what delusion deranged his mind, but she had to get away from him before he turned violent.
“Ah,” he said, pulling away from her. “Forgive me again. Twice I ask forgiveness from the same woman. What is happening to me? I cannot bear this.”
With an effort, Sveta raised her hand, and was shocked to see her bandaged fingers. Her whole right hand felt numbed so that she still did not feel the pain; that would come later.
“It’s too much for me,” she said. “I don’t understand anything you’re saying.”
“You who do not believe in the unseen, how can you comprehend the curse pronounced on my soul?”
Slowly, and with her muscles screaming for her to lie back down, she rose and propped herself on elbow. She was suddenly angrier than she had been in a long time.
“What I can’t understand is all this vague bullshit,” she said. “Just tell me what the fuck is going on here. Who are you, what is that thing and how can we get out of here without it eating us?”
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