Wolfhound Century

by Peter Higgins

  ‘Fuck,’ said Vishnik quietly, almost to himself. ‘Fuck.’ A tired resignation settled over him. None of it mattered now. He had known this time would come. He picked up the holdall, waiting packed by the doorway. ‘OK,’ he said to the VKBD man. ‘OK. Let’s go.’

  The VKBD man took the bag from Vishnik’s hand and shut the door.

  ‘You won’t be needing that,’ he said. ‘We’re not going anywhere. All we need is here.’

  ‘What?’ said Vishnik.

  ‘Where is Lom? Where is the girl? Where is the file?’

  ‘What the fuck is this?’ Vishnik was angry. Livid. ‘Who the fuck are you, with your fucking questions? Look at my room. Look what you have done. You can go fuck yourself.’

  ‘Where is Lom? Where is the girl? Where is the file? Please answer.’

  ‘Number one,’ said Vishnik. ‘I don’t know. Number two. What girl? Number three. What fucking file?’

  The two men in rubber overalls were standing now. They picked up the couch and moved it to the middle of the room. The VKBD man repeated the questions. And then the fear came. Vishnik stumbled and almost fell. But he would not fall. He would not.

  ‘You,’ said Vishnik, ‘can piss for it.’

  The VKBD man indicated the couch in front of him.

  ‘Sit down, Prince Vishnik. No, lie down. Close your eyes and think. We have plenty of time. Shout all you like. No one will come. The dvornik will have told them we are here and they’ll keep quiet until we are gone. You know this is true. No one will come to help you. Now…’ He put a hand on Vishnik’s shoulder and propelled him gently forward. ‘Please don’t feel you must attempt to endure. Prolongation of your pain is needless and inconvenient.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said Vishnik. ‘Fuck you.’

  55

  Lom’s tram forced its way against the rising storm. The other passengers sat tightly silent, staring out through the rain-streaming windows. The air grew bruises, purple and electric. Wind burst upon the streets in panicky, erratic bellows. Ragged whorls and twisters of wind-lashed rain threw hard gobbets against roofs and windows. Within moments floodwater was gushing up through the gratings of the sewers.

  The tramway was raised above it, running on embankments and viaducts. Lom watched the mounting flood through blurred glass. People caught in the streets wrapped their arms over their heads and waded for shelter. The embankments of the city overbrimmed. Canal barges and ferries were tipped out of their channels into the streets and surged about helplessly before the wind, thumping hollowly against the walls of buildings, smashing through the windows of shops and theatres and restaurants. Pale faces looked out from upper windows. Droshki drivers struggled in the teeth of the storm to cut their horses loose from their traces and let them swim. It was impossible to tell street from canal. Some people had taken to boats and sculled their way slowly between tenements and shopfronts. A few souls swam, making little progress against the currents and churn.

  The tram trundled on, deeper into the city, until at last the inevitable confronted it and it lurched to a halt in a shower of sparks from the power cable overhead, up to its wheel-tops in mud-thickened surging water. In the aftermath of the engine’s surrender, wind and rain filled Lom’s ears. His first instinct was to wait where he was, but the driver was shouting at them that they had to get out.

  ‘The water is rising! The car will tip!’

  They could already feel her shifting uneasily under the pressure of the flood. One by one they climbed down. The water was almost up to his waist, brown and icy cold.

  The passengers from the tram stood in a huddle in the water, ineffectually wiping at the rain streaming down their faces, at a loss. There was a small bakery nearby, its door open, the flood lapping dully at the counter lip. Baskets and sodden loaves and pastries floated low in the water. From an upstairs casement a man in a pink shirt was beckoning, mouthing, his words lost in the rain. The others moved towards the shop, but Lom ignored him. He had to get to Pelican Quay.

  56

  When Lakoba Petrov came to his room, Josef Kantor’s first instinct was to shoot him out of hand. Petrov stank like shit in a ditch. He had shaved his head, and his body, always thin, was a bundle of sticks. He was sodden, weighted down with water, a drowned rat. There were smears of what looked like paint or ink on his face, as if he had been writing on himself. His pupils were dilated, wide and dark.

  ‘You told the girl where to find me,’ said Kantor. ‘You are an idiot, a useless fool. What are you doing here now?’

  But Petrov only looked puzzled.

  ‘Girl?’

  ‘The Shaumian girl.’

  Petrov waved the issue aside.

  ‘I have come,’ he said. ‘I am prepared. What we spoke of earlier. The great inflagration, when all things will burn. I have decided. Let it come.’

  Kantor withdrew his hand from his pocket. He had been fingering his revolver, but he let it lie. Instead he sat back in his chair and regarded Petrov with an interested benevolence. He had given up on this plan, and intended to use Lidia or Stefania, but he had not been able to overcome his doubts about their reliability. Their commitment to the sacrifice that was required. If Petrov had come back to him, that was better. That would be much more satisfactory.

  He smiled at Petrov.

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Very good. I’m glad you came to me, my friend. Let us discuss what you need.’

  57

  Walking against the flood was a perilous business. The water was slicked with oil and foulness. A dead rat nudged against his chest and caught there. Lom slapped it away with a shudder. The cold numbed his feet; hidden kerbs and obstructions underfoot threatened to trip and duck him at every step; his cloak spread sluggishly about him on the water. There were fewer and fewer people about. The streets were being abandoned to the rising waters. Lom rounded a corner and saw a flat-bottomed boat making slow headway away from him. Lom surged ahead, shouting. The boat, already low in the water with the weight of hunched bodies, was being poled effortfully forward by a man standing in the stern. Someone saw Lom and tugged at the boatman’s sleeve. He paused to rest and let Lom catch up. Lom grabbed the gunwale with both hands and hauled himself over the side, falling heavily into the bottom among feet and sodden belongings.

  ‘Thank you,’ he breathed. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Fifty roubles,’ said the boatman.

  Lom fumbled for the money with chilled, clumsy fingers and leaned across to pay him — not fifty roubles, but all he had — rocking the boat and elbowing his neighbour. She glared at him in mute protest. The boat punted forward in silence, past the Laughing Cockerel Theatre and the sagging balconies of the Apraksin. The wind was getting up, whipping the rain into their faces, raising low, choppy waves and flecks of spray. Lom found himself shivering. At least the floods gave him time. Chazia’s people couldn’t move in this.

  An argument broke out among the passengers. A group of conscripts wanted to be taken to the Armoury and were attempting to commandeer the vessel. The boatman had had enough and wanted to go home. He poled stubbornly onwards, ignoring the soldiers’ attempts to issue orders and impress upon him the urgency of his duty. The rest of the passengers looked on disconsolately, having given themselves up to events, indifferent to where they were carried as long as they stayed out of the icy, dirty water. Lom kept out of it. Neither direction suited him.

  The boat was crossing a wide inundated square when the arguing soldiers fell quiet. Lom followed the direction of their gaze. There was something in the water. A smooth coil of movement. It came again, and then again: a slicker, surer movement than the wavelets chopping and jostling in the wind. Lom glimpsed a solid, steely-grey, oil-sleeked gun barrel of flesh. He thought it was an eel, but larger. Blackish flukes broke the surface without a splash and a face was watching him. A human face.

  Almost human. It was the almost-humanness of the face that made it so shocking, because it wasn’t human at all. It was a soft chalky white, the white of hu
man flesh too long in the water, with hollow eye-sockets and deep dark eyes, the nose set higher and sharper than a human nose, the mouth a straight, lipless gash. The creature raised its torso higher and higher out of the water, showing an underbelly of the same subaqueous white as the face, and heavy white breasts, with nipples like a woman’s but larger and bruise-coloured, bluish black. Below the almost-human torso, the dark tube of fluke-tailed muscle was working away. The creature’s face was watching him continuously. It knew he was there. It knew it was being watched. There was no expression on its face at all. None whatsoever.

  The creature swam swiftly towards the crowded boat, its white face upturned, watching Lom intently. He saw its hollow dark eyes, its expressionless mouth slightly open. He heard a faint hiss, like an expulsion of breath. It came right up to the boat and put its hands up on the sides, and began to tug and rock it, trying to pull itself in. It had a smooth, square, white upper back, like a man’s, with a faint raised ridge the length of its spine.

  ‘Rusalka! Rusalka!’

  The boatman was yelling, panicked, and striking at the creature with his long heavy pole. One of the conscripts shouted in protest and lunged across the thwarts to grab at his arm, but it was too late. The boatman caught the rusalka a heavy blow full on its head, and it withdrew under the water.

  The soldier jumped in after it.

  ‘Come back!’ he was shouting. ‘Please! Come back!’

  He splashed about until he was exhausted and sobbing and gulping for air. At last he let his companions pull him back into the boat. While the passengers’ attention was distracted Lom slipped over the side and waded away towards the edge of the square.

  58

  Krogh barely looked up when his private secretary came into the office carrying another stack of files. As always, the files would be placed in the in-tray and the completed work from the other tray would be cleared. It would be done without speaking. That was the routine. Minimal disturbance. Krogh was slightly surprised when the private secretary lingered, and walked around behind the desk to stand in the bay and look out of the windows. The rain was pouring in sheets out of the ruinous, bruised sky.

  ‘The floods are rising,’ the private secretary said.

  Krogh grunted. The interruption irritated him. He was already unsettled following the call from Lom.

  ‘I won’t go home tonight,’ he said. ‘I’ll sleep in the flat. I may need to speak to the Novozhd later. There’s no need for you to stay, Pavel. Go home now before the bridges are closed.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  There was something in the private secretary’s tone that surprised him.

  ‘Well,’ said Krogh, ‘get them to find a launch to take you. Tell them I said so. I don’t want you any more, not till tomorrow.’

  ‘There was a message from Commander Chazia.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That you were a stupid old fucker.’

  Krogh realised too late how close behind him the private secretary had come. The loop of wire was round his neck before he could react. It tightened, cutting into the folds of his flesh. He felt it slicing. Felt the warm blood spill down his neck inside his collar. It splashed the papers on his desk. He tried to get his fingers inside the wire, but could not. His fingers slipped on the blood. He felt the wire cut them. He tried to stand up, he tried to fight, he tried to call out, but the private secretary was leaning away from him, pulling at his neck with the wire loop, tipping him backwards, unbalancing him. He tried to throw himself sideways but the private secretary hauled him upright. No sound could escape from his constricted throat. He could get no air in. He felt the back of his chair digging into his head. It hurt. Then he died.

  59

  When Maroussia Shaumian reached the building where Raku Vishnik lived, she found the street door shut against the rising waters. She pushed it open and waded into the dim, flooded hall. Her splashing echoed oddly. She felt the weight of her sodden clothes dragging at her as she climbed the stairs to Apartment 4. The door was ajar.

  ‘Raku?’ she called softly. ‘Raku? It’s Maroussia.’

  There was no answer. She pushed the door open and went in.

  What was left of Vishnik lay on the couch, adrift on a sea of littered paper and broken household stuff. He was naked, on his back, his arms and legs lashed by neat bindings to the legs of the couch. There was blood. A lot of blood. Three fingers of his right hand were gone.

  She must have made some sound — she didn’t know what — because he turned his pulped and swollen face in her direction. He was watching her with his one open eye. She had thought he was dead.

  She went across the room to him. He was moving his mouth. He might have been speaking but she couldn’t hear him over the sound of the rain against the windows. She knelt down beside him. The water from her dress soaked the drift of notebooks and scattered photographs.

  ‘Maroussia—’ he said. ‘I didn’t…’

  What should I do? she thought. What should I do?

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll help you.’ What should I do? She tried to undo one of the knots, but it was tight and slippery with blood. Her fingers tugged at it uselessly. ‘What happened?’ she said. ‘Who did this? What can I do, Raku?’

  ‘I found it,’ said Vishnik. He was staring at her with his one remaining eye. They had taken the other one. ‘It’s here and I found it. I didn’t tell them what I know.’

  ‘It’s OK, Raku,’ she said. ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘No. I want to tell you. I wanted to. I was going to.’ He tried to raise his head from the couch. There was blood in his mouth. ‘I found it. I found it. And they were here… But they didn’t get it. Even they… even they are human. And stupid.’

  ‘Raku?’

  He laid his head back against the couch. His mouth fell partly open. His face was empty. He was gone.

  Maroussia stood up. She was trembling.

  I need to get out of here. I need to get out of here now.

  The horror of the thing on the couch — what they had done to him… She could not stay. It was impossible. But the storm was raging outside, and the floods… She had almost not made it here. Where could she go? How?

  She went to the window, parted the curtains and looked out into storming darkness. The casement was rattling in its frame; the reflection of the room behind her flexed as the panes bowed under the force of the wind. She pressed her face against the glass, trying to see.

  The street lamps were out. The only faint light came from the windows of neighbouring houses, but she could see by their glimmering reflection on the waves down below that the flood had risen further. There must have been ten to fifteen feet of surging water in the street, whipped into choppy, spray-spilling peaks.

  And there was a boat.

  A diesel launch was nosing its way up the flooded street, half a dozen uniformed men in the open stern, hunching their shoulders against the rain, MILITIA OF MIRGOROD in white lettering on the roof of the cabin.

  She heard a movement in the room behind her, and spun round, thinking wildly that it was Vishnik, raising himself somehow from the couch.

  But it was Lom.

  ‘We have to get out,’ said Maroussia ‘We have to go. They’re outside now. They have a boat.’

  ‘I know,’ said Lom. ‘I saw them.’ He was looking at Vishnik. ‘I came for him.’

  ‘Raku’s dead,’ said Maroussia. ‘He was… He spoke to me when I got here, he said… he said he told them nothing.’

  ‘He had nothing to tell. They didn’t need to do this.’

  From down below there came the sound of hollow thumping, wood striking against wood, heavily. Glass breaking.

  ‘There’s no time,’ said Maroussia. ‘We have to go now.’

  Lom stood looking at Vishnik for a moment.

  ‘Take the stairs,’ he said. ‘Not the lift. Go up. In houses like this the roof space is usually open from house to house. All the way to the end of the row if
you’re lucky. Keep going up. You’ll find a way.’

  ‘What about you?’ she said. ‘Aren’t you coming?’

  ‘I’ll keep them occupied. You can find a boat on the quay.’

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ said Maroussia.

  ‘They won’t,’ said Lom. ‘Not straight away. They need to know what I’ve done. They need to be sure.’

  Maroussia shook her head. ‘Come with me,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Lom.

  Maroussia hesitated. There was another crash from downstairs. A shout.

  ‘Shit,’ said Lom. ‘Just go. You need to go. Please.’

  There was nothing else to say. She turned away from him and went out of the door.

  60

  When Maroussia had gone, Lom went to the lift cage and pressed the button to summon the car. The mechanism juddered loudly into life. The lift was on one of the upper floors, and it took agonising moments to descend. When it reached him, he pulled open the cage and stepped inside, pressed the button for the basement and stepped back out again. There was a splash when it hit the water below. It wouldn’t be coming back, not with the weight of water inside it. That left only the stairwell.

  He went to the top of the stairs. He would see down one flight and the landing below. He checked the gun. Checked it again.

  A quiet voice. The sound of boots. A face peering up from the landing below.

  Lom fired high. The shot struck the wall above the man’s head, and he ducked out of sight.

  ‘Lom?’ It was Safran’s voice. ‘Lom? Is that you? What are you hoping to achieve?’

  Lom fired another shot down the stairwell.

  ‘Don’t try to come up,’ he called. ‘I’ll shoot anyone I see. I won’t fire high again.’

  ‘There are six of us, Lom. You haven’t got a chance.’