Wolfhound Century

by Peter Higgins

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Yet there are… elements in Mirgorod — in the Vlast — elements who find the concept of negotiation unacceptable. There are those who say there should be no end to the war at all. Ever. Warfare waged for unlimited ends! A battle waged not against people like ourselves but against the contrary principle. The great enemy.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘These people are mad, Lom. Their aims are absurd. Absolute and total war is an absurd aim. Exhaustion and death. Ruin for the winners as much as the losers. You see this, you’re an intelligent man. The Novozhd understands it, though many around him do not. The negotiations must not fail. There will not be a second chance.’

  ‘Surely these are matters for diplomats. I don’t see—’

  ‘The Novozhd’s enemies are determined to bring him down. They will use any means possible, and they will work with anyone — anyone — who can further their cause.’

  ‘Including Josef Kantor?’

  ‘Precisely. Kantor is a one-man war zone, Lom. His campaigns cause chaos. He sows fear and distrust. People lose faith. The Novozhd is failing to control him. I am failing. We are all failing. The security services grow restless. People are already whispering against us. Against the Novozhd. Which of course means opportunity for those who wish to replace him. The time is ripening for a coup. This is not accidental. There is a plan. There is a plot.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Kantor is the lynchpin, Lom. Kantor is king terrorist. The main man. Bring him down and it all comes down. Bring him down and the Novozhd is safe.’

  ‘I understand. But… why are you telling me all this? What’s it got to do with me?’

  ‘I want you to find Kantor, Lom. Find him for me.’

  ‘But… why me? I know nothing of Mirgorod, I know nobody here. You have the whole police department… the gendarmerie… the third section… the militia…’

  ‘These disqualifications are what make you the one I need. The only one I must have. Why have I got your file, Lom? What brought you to my notice?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Krogh picked up the folder again.

  ‘There are enough complaints against you in here,’ he said, ‘to have you exiled to Vig yourself tomorrow. Serious charges. I see through all that, of course. Innuendo and fabrication. I see what motivates them. You’re not afraid to make enemies, and they hate that. That’s why I need you, Lom. The Novozhd’s enemies are all around me. I know they are there, but I don’t know who they are. I can trust nobody. Nobody. But you, Investigator. Consider…’ Krogh ticked off the points on his fingers. ‘A good detective. Loyal to the Vlast. Incorrupt. Independent. Courageous. Probably not stupid. You know nobody in the city. Nobody knows you. You see where I’m going?’

  ‘Well, yes but—’

  ‘You will probably fail, of course,’ said Krogh. ‘But you might just succeed. You find Kantor, Lom, and you stop him. By any means possible. Any at all. And more — you find out who’s running him. Somebody here is pulling Kantor’s strings. Find out who it is. You find out what the bastards are up to, Lom, and when you do, you tell me. Only me. Got that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll be on your own,’ said Krogh. ‘You’ll have no help. No help at all. This is your chance, Lom, if you can take it.’

  10

  Josef Kantor was reading at his desk. The window of his room stood open. He liked how night sharpened the sounds and perfumes of the wharf. He liked to let it into his room. There was no need for the lamp: arc lights and glare and spark-showers flickered across the pages of his book. There was no better light to read by. The light of men working. The light of the future.

  He heard the quiet footfall on wet paving, the footsteps climbing the iron staircase. One person alone. A woman, probably. He was waiting in the shadow just outside his door when she reached the top, his hand in his jacket pocket nursing his revolver. He made sure she was in the light and he was not.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I meant never to come here, but I had no choice.’

  A group of men just off their shift were coming up the alleyway, talking loudly. Curious glances at the woman on the staircase. She wasn’t the kind you saw in the yard at night. They would remember. Kantor didn’t need that sort of attention.

  ‘Go in,’ said Kantor.

  He followed her into the room and lit the lamp. He saw that she was young — early twenties, maybe — and thin. Her hands were rough and red from manual work, her wrists bony against the dark fabric of her sleeves, but her face was filled with life and intelligence. Thick black hair, cut short around her neck, fell across her brow, curled and wet. It had been raining earlier, though now it was not. Her coat was made of thin, poor stuff, little use against the weather, but, fresh and flushed from the cold, she brought an outside air into the room, not the industry and commerce of the shipyards but fresh earth and wet leaves. She met his gaze without hesitation: her eyes looking into his were bright and dark.

  There was something about her. It unsettled at him. She was not familiar, exactly, but there was a quality in her that he almost recognised, though he couldn’t place it.

  ‘You’ve made a mistake,’ he said. ‘Wrong person. Wrong place.’

  ‘No. You’re Josef Kantor.’

  Kantor didn’t like his name spoken by strangers.

  ‘I’ve told you. You’re mistaken,’ he said. ‘You’re confusing me with someone else.’

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is important. I’m not going until we’ve talked. You owe me that.’

  She took off her coat, draped it over the back of a chair and sat down. Underneath the coat she was wearing a knitted cardigan of dark green wool. Severe simplicity. Her throat was bare and her breasts were small inside the cardigan. Kantor was curious.

  ‘Since you refuse to leave,’ he said, ‘you’d better tell me who you are.’

  ‘I’m your daughter.’

  Kantor looked at her blankly. He was, for once, surprised. Genuinely surprised.

  ‘I have no daughter,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you do. It’s me. I am Maroussia Shaumian.’

  It took Kantor a moment to adjust. He had not expected this, but he should have: of course he should. He had known there was a child, the Shaumian woman’s child, the child of the frightened woman he’d married all those years ago, before Vig, before everything. That affair had been a young man’s mistake: but, he realised now, it had been a far worse mistake to let them live. He studied the young woman more carefully.

  ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘You are that girl. How did you find me?’

  ‘Lakoba Petrov told me where you were.’

  ‘Petrov? The painter? You should choose better friends than Petrov.’

  ‘I haven’t come here to talk about my friends.’

  ‘No?’ said Kantor. ‘So what is this? A family talk? I am not interested in families.’

  Maroussia put her hand in the pocket of her cardigan and brought out a small object cupped in her hand. She held it out to him. It was a thing like a nest, a rough ball made of twigs and leaves, fine bones and dried berries held together with blobs of yellowish wax and knotted grass. ‘I want you to tell me what this is,’ she said.

  Kantor took it from her. As soon as he held it, everything in the room was the wrong size, too big and too small at the same time, the angles dizzy, the floor dropping away precipitously at his feet. The smell of resinous trees and damp earth was strong in the air. The forest presence. Kantor hadn’t felt it for more than twenty years. He had forgotten how much he hated it. He swallowed back the feeling of sickness that rose in his throat and moved to throw the disgusting thing onto the fire.

  ‘Don’t!’ Maroussia snatched it back from him. ‘Do you know what it is?’ she said. ‘Do you know what it means?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. Where did you get it?’

  ‘Mother has them. I stole this one from her. I don’t know w
here she gets them from, but I think they come from the forest, or have something to do with it.’

  ‘Nothing useful ever came from that muddy rainy chaos world under the trees. That’s all just shit. So much shit.’

  ‘I think these things are important.’

  ‘Then ask your mother what they are.’

  ‘She can’t tell me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Do you really not know? Don’t you know anything about us at all? You could have found out, if you wanted to.’

  It was true. He could have taken steps. He had considered it while he was at Vig, after the Shaumian woman had left him, and later. But it would have meant asking questions. He had told himself it was better to share with no one the knowledge of their existence. That had been stupid. He could see that, now. Now, it was obvious.

  ‘My mother isn’t well,’ the girl was saying. ‘She hasn’t been well for years. In her mind, I mean. She’s always frightened. She thinks bad things are happening and she is being watched. Followed. She never goes out, and she’s always muttering about the trees. For months now these things have been appearing in our room. I’ve seen three or four, but I think there have been more. She pulls them apart and throws them away. She won’t say anything about them, but she keeps talking about something that happened in Vig. Something that happened when she went into the trees.’

  ‘You should forget about all that,’ said Kantor. ‘Forget the past. Detach yourself. Forget this nostalgia for the old muddy places. Trolls and witches in the woods. These stories aren’t meant to be believed. Their time is finished.’

  ‘They’re not stories. They’re real. And they’re here. They’re in the city. The city was built on top of it, but the old world is still here.’ She held up the little ball of twigs and stuff. ‘These are real. These are important. They’re from the forest, and my mother is meant to understand something, but she doesn’t. Something happened to her in the forest long ago. And…‘ She hesitated. ‘She keeps talking about the Pollandore. I need you to tell me what happened then. I need you to tell me about the Pollandore.’

  For the second time, Kantor was genuinely startled. Whatever he had expected her to say, it was not that.

  ‘The Pollandore?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I don’t believe that. I need you to tell me about it. And tell me about my mother. What happened to her in the forest? It’s all connected. I need to understand it. I have a right to know. You’re my father. You have to tell me.’

  Kantor was tired of playing games. It was time to end this. End the pretence. Open her eyes. Peel back the lids. Make the child stare at some truth.

  ‘I’m not your father,’ he said.

  She stared at him.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What do you mean? Yes you are.’

  ‘That’s what your mother told you, apparently, but she lied. Of course she lied. She always lied. How could I be your father? She would not… your mother would not… She refused me… For months. Before she became pregnant. She went into the trees. She kept going there. And then she abandoned me and ran back home to Mirgorod. You’re not my child. I’m not your father. I couldn’t be.’

  There was raw shock in her face.

  ‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘You’re lying.’

  But he saw that she did believe him.

  ‘What does it matter, anyway?’ he said. ‘What difference does it make?’

  ‘It matters,’ she said. ‘It matters to me.’

  ‘Hoping for a cuddle from Daddy? Then ask your mother who he is. If you can get any sense out of the old bitch.’

  The girl was staring at him. Her face was white and set hard. Blank like a mask. So be it. She would not look to him for help again.

  ‘You bastard,’ she said quietly. ‘You bastard.’

  ‘Technically, that’s you. The forest whore’s bastard daughter.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  After she had gone Kantor extinguished the lamp again and sat for a long time, considering carefully. The girl’s visit had stirred old memories. Vig. The forest edge. The Pollandore. He’d thought he had eradicated such things. Killed and forgotten them. But they were only repressed. And the repressed always returns. The girl had said that.

  He should have done something about the Shaumian women long ago: that he had not done so revealed a weakness he hadn’t known was in him, and such weakness was dangerous. More than that, the girl was a threat in her own right. She was rank with the forest, and surprisingly strong. She had caused him to show his weakness to her. He would have to do something: the necessity of that was clear at last. He must end it now. He was glad she had come. Laying bare weakness was the first step to becoming stronger. In the familiar dialectic of fear and killing, only the future mattered. Only the future was at stake.

  11

  Maroussia Shaumian walked out through the night din and confusion of the dockyard and on into nondescript streets of tenements and small warehouses. She was trembling. She needed to think, but she could not. There was too much. She walked. Wanting to be tired. Not wanting to go home. Scarcely noticing where she went.

  There was rain in the air and more rain coming, a mass of dark low cloud building towards the east, but overhead there were gaps of clear blackness and stars. She didn’t know what time it was. Late.

  She came at last to the Stolypin Embankment: a row of globe lamps along the parapet, held up by bronze porpoises. Glistening cobbles under lamplight. Beyond the parapet, she felt more than saw the slow-moving Mir, sliding out into the Reach, barges and late water taxis still pushing against the black river. The long, punctuated reflections of their navigation lights trickled towards her, and the talk of the boatmen carried across the water, intimate and quiet. She couldn’t make out the words: it felt like language from another country. A gendarme was observing her from his kiosk, but she ignored him and went to sit on a bench, watching the wide dark river, its flow, its weight, its stillness in movement. She took the knotted nest of forest stuff out of her pocket and held it to her face, breathing in its strange earthy perfume. Filling her lungs.

  And then it happened, as it sometimes did.

  A tremble of movement crossed the black underside of the clouds, like wind across a pool, and the buildings of the night city prickled; the nap of the city rising, uneasy, anxious. Maroussia waited, listening. Nothing more came. Nothing changed. The rain-freighted clouds settled into a new shape. And then, suddenly, the solidity of Mirgorod stone and iron broke open and slid away, vertiginously. The blackness and ripple of the water detached itself from the river and slipped upwards, filling the air, and everything changed. The night was thick with leaking possibilities. Soft evaporations. Fragments and intimations of other possible lives, drifting off the river and across the dirty pavements. Hopes, like moon-ghosts, leaking out of the streets.

  The barges, swollen and heavy-perfumed, dipped their sterns and raised their bows, opening their mouths as if to speak, exhaling shining yellow. The porpoises threw their mist-swollen, corn-gold lamp-globes against the sky. The cobbles of the wharf opened their petals like peals of blue thunder. The stars were large and luminous night-blue fruit. And the gendarme in his kiosk was ten feet tall, spilling streams of perfume and darkshine from his face and skin and hair.

  Everything dark shone with its own quiet radiance and nothing was anything except what it was. Maroussia felt the living profusion of it all, woven into bright constellations of awareness, spreading out across the city. She looked at her own hands. They were made of dark wet leaves. And then the clouds closed over the stars and it started to rain in big slow single drops, and Mirgorod settled in about her again, as it always did.

  12

  It was late when Lom got out of Krogh’s office. The streets about the Lodka were deserted. Shuttered and lightless offices. The wind threw pellets of rain in his face. Water spurted from downpipes and spouts and overflowing gutters, splashing on the pavements. Occasionally a private karet
a passed him, windows up, blinds drawn.

  In his valise he had a folder of newspaper clippings — accounts of attacks and atrocities attributed to Kantor and his people, Krogh had said — and one photograph, old and poorly developed, of Kantor himself, taken almost twenty years ago, at the time of his transfer to Vig. And he had a mission. A real job to do. At last. Mirgorod spread out around him, rumbling quietly in the dark of rain and night. A million people, and somewhere among them Josef Kantor. And behind him, shadow people. Poison in the system. The ache in his head had gone, but it had left him hungry. He needed something to eat. He needed a place to stay. He needed a way in. A starting point. He wished he’d asked Krogh about money.

  In his pocket he had Raku Vishnik’s address: an apartment somewhere on Big Side. He had a vague idea of where it was, somewhere to the north, beyond the curve of the River Mir. Not more than a couple of miles. He had no money for a hotel, and he didn’t want to pay for a droshki ride, even if he could find one. He would go to Raku. Assuming he was still there. Lom buttoned his cloak to the neck and started to walk. A fresh deluge dashed against his face and trickled down his neck. A long black ZorKi Zavod armoured sedan purred past him, chauffeur-driven, darkened black windows, the rain glittering in its headlamp beams. White-walled tyres splashing through pools in the road. Lom hunched his shoulders and kept moving.

  The hypnotic rhythm of walking. The sound of water against stone. As he walked, Lom thought about the city. Mirgorod. He’d never seen it before, but all his life he had lived with the idea of it. The great capital, the Founder’s city, the heart of the Vlast. Even as a child, long before the idea of joining the police had taken shape, the dream of Mirgorod had taken root in his imagination. He remembered the moment. Memories rose out of the wet streets. He was back in Podchornok, at the Institute of Truth. Seven years old. Eight. It was another day of rain, but he was in the library, looking out. He liked the library: there were deep, tall windows, their sills wide enough to climb up onto and crouch there. Although it was grey daylight, he pulled the curtain shut and he was alone: on one side the heavy curtain, and on the other the windowpane, rain splattering against it and running in little floods down the outside of the glass. Beyond the window, the edge of the wood — not the forest, just an ordinary wood, rain-darkened, leafless under a low grey sky. And him, reading by rainlight.