Darwin's Nightmare

by Mike Knowles

  It took less than ten minutes to drive from the office to the Kremlin. Barton Street was a concrete Rolodex through the city. Every neighbourhood was connected to the street. I followed it through the Italian, Vietnamese, and Polish neighbourhoods until I found the Kremlin. I parked at the curb across the street from the club and scanned the front of the building; it was long and rectangular with a small sign that read “Private” to the left of the entryway. The door was made of heavy metal and looked like it would withstand a police battering ram. The two windows on either side of the entrance were barred with heavy black metal rods. It was clear that I wasn’t getting inside the building unless I was allowed through the front door. I got out of the car and crossed the street. As I walked, I took the unlit cigarette from behind my ear and put it in my mouth, then I moved the pack of cigarettes and lighter from my pocket to my right hand. There was no doorman out front, and I expected the door to be locked. I was surprised when I pulled the door and it swung out on well-oiled hinges.

  I walked inside and had to blink quickly to adjust to the lack of light. Two men in suits approached; they were similar, almost like siblings, but the resemblance wasn’t genetic — it was in the scars they carried. Their noses were flat, their eyes had an abundance of scar tissue, and their ears were cauliflowered. My eyes became used to the dark enough for me to see two bulges under their suits; they had guns — big guns.

  The man on the left greeted me coldly with a deep, accented voice. “I’m sorry, sir, this is a private club. You must be leaving.”

  His arm laced mine as the other man stepped behind me on my right. I didn’t move. “Tell Mikhail there’s someone here with business to discuss.”

  “You will be leaving now.” The voice didn’t rise in volume; it just mechanically repeated its command.

  “Listen, I’m not moving. I’m going over to the bar and you’re going to let Mikhail know that a friend of Igor’s is here to see him. If he still doesn’t want to see me, you can throw me out. I won’t fight it.”

  There was only a fraction-of-a-second pause before the man replied, “You must be checked.”

  I sighed and put the cigarette pack and lighter on the nearest table. I held out my arms and waited while he patted me down. The search was thorough except for the fact that he left the cigarettes and lighter alone. The silent doorman never looked at me, nor did he look away; he had a sense of dreamy awareness.

  After my search, the bodyguards went to inform Mikhail about my presence. I picked up my things and walked to the bar. I slapped the mahogany surface hard with my palm. “Vodka, comrade. Nothing cheap, either. Mother Russia’s finest,” I demanded in a happy tone. I wanted these men to think I was a joke — pushing them with North American ignorance would help.

  The bartender killed me twice with his eyes, but he fetched the drink with robotic efficiency. Moments later, I heard the quiet footsteps of the returning doormen and watched them, out of the corner of my eye, take seats at a table ten feet from me. Their distance and looks of disgust meant I was about to meet Mikhail.

  After a minute, I was joined at the bar by a sandy-haired man in his early forties. He sat lower than me on the bar stool. I estimated he was about five-eight. He seemed fit, and there was a U-shaped scar under his right eye. He had been a fighter once. The signs never left.

  “Who are you?” Mikhail’s voice had no accent but it seemed to command respect.

  “You sent two boys to kill me earlier. I want to talk about it.”

  If my words hit a nerve or shocked Mikhail, he didn’t show it. He turned his head slightly and looked closely at me. I put the cigarette pack on the bar and lit the only remaining cigarette.

  “Was it the boys who told you to come here?” Mikhail put some edge on the word boys; the edge told me they would be dead by morning.

  “I want to know why I’m on your radar, and I want to know how to work this problem out,” I said.

  “It is very admirable of you to try and parlay peace, but it is in vain. You were stupid to come here. All you have saved is the cost of the gas it would have taken to find you again.”

  Mikhail had confirmed I was on his shit list, and that I needed to get higher up the on the food chain before I could bargain. “Call Sergei and ask him what he thinks. See if my being here, and the fact that I’m not dead yet, changes anything. If not, I’ll pay up, and we can settle this now.”

  “I will not be calling anyone. You made a huge mistake and I will not be doing the same.” His hard eyes watched me the whole time he spoke.

  I pulled out my wallet. The movement caused no alarm with Mikhail; he knew I had been frisked before I sat down. The bodyguards moved closer, about five feet behind me. One was to my right, the other to the left of Mikhail. I pulled the fake credit card free and put my wallet away.

  I took the first drag off my cigarette and said, “I’ll pay up and we can get started.”

  Mikhail smiled, as if my gesture was amusing. I looked into his eyes and felt the left side of my face pull into a cold grin — my uncle’s grin. I took another drag of my cigarette and put the glowing tip into the hole in my pack of cigarettes. The package immediately began to expand. I had it airborne, on its way to Mikhail’s face, by the time it exploded. His scream shocked the bodyguards, but they didn’t draw their guns right away. The two men were street toughs; they never prepared for being attacked. They only thought they had to look scary. The fireball had confused them. They didn’t know whether to protect the boss or kill me. The exploding condom set Mikhail’s hair and coat on fire; his lips let out a shriek as he rolled, burning, on the floor. The credit card hung low in my right hand as I covered the five feet between the bodyguards and myself. The guard on the right saw me coming; he shrugged back his coat and reached across his body. I used my left palm to mash his gun hand against his chest, suppressing his draw. The card was edge out in my hand as I punched across the bodyguards shoulder, being sure to tag the side of his neck. The spray of blood that followed meant I hit the carotid artery. The second guard was faster and already had his hand across his chest. I took the first guard, now a crimson fountain, by his lapels and pushed the both of us like a battering ram into his partner. The second man had freed his gun from the holster, but the bleeding guard rammed into him and trapped the gun between their bodies. I dropped the card and took advantage of the guard trying to plug the leak in his throat. I pulled his gun from the exposed holster and shot through his body four times.

  I kicked the second guard’s gun away from his body and checked both men for signs of life. I turned away from the dead bodies when I heard a sizzle from behind me. The bartender had squirted water from his bar sink onto Mikhail to put him out. I shot the bartender square in the chest, sending water shooting up to the ceiling. Mikhail was the only one left; his curses and moans mingled with the smells of gunpowder and burning hair. I walked over to him and pulled out the cell phone I took off of Igor.

  “Dial Sergei and tell him I want out of this.”

  “Sergei doesn’t make deals. This ch . . . changes nothing.” His voice had lost its tone of authority after the fire on his head went out.

  “Look around, Mikhail. Everything has changed. Sergei might not make deals, but I’ll float one your way. Make the call, and I’ll move on.”

  I dropped Igor’s cell phone on the bar and righted a stool. I took a seat and waited while Mikhail got up off the floor. Parts of his face and scalp were blistered, and a good portion of his neck was seared. He picked up the phone and dialled. I watched him press the buttons and committed the number to memory.

  The feeling of the pistol on the burned skin of his neck froze Mikhail solid. “Put the phone on speaker, and keep it English.”

  Mikhail sniffed hard and spat out a glob of black fluid onto the floor. “I have to ask for Sergei in Russian or I won’t be put through.”

  “Make it quick. This is not the time to get ideas.”

  I listened to Mikhail spit out a machine-gun senten
ce in Russian. I pressed the gun hard into his burned scalp, forcing him to keep the Russian short. He ended his sentence and waited nervously for a reply.

  “Da?” The phone belched out a thick Russian voice.

  “Sergei, there has been a complication.”

  “Da?” The same word, but a new meaning — something entirely different than yes. The quiet word spoke loud volumes, demanding explanation, apology, and appeasement.

  “The two men I sent failed, and now the thief has killed three men here at the club.”

  “Da?” This last word was chiselled out of concrete. It was a short word, but its slow delivery made it seem like a harsh rebuke.

  “Yes, he wants to know what can be done to . . . make this right.”

  There was no cryptic reply right away. The pause could be good or bad. It could be a thought or it could be the silence of a multitasker. The silence someone would need to send more men to the club.

  “He is there with you now?”

  “Yes, Sergei. He is listening.”

  “Something was taken . . . information. I want it back,” Sergei said.

  “The information is out of my hands now; it’s been passed on and probably dissected,” I said.

  “Nyet. This information was . . . unique. The men who wanted it would not show it to many people. I am told the information was encrypted, and those who stole it will not be able to see what it is right away. It will take time, the proper tools, and expertise to make sense of it. You say you want this to be over. Regain this information you stole, along with any equipment used to decode it, and all will be forgotten. This must be done by tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is too fast.”

  “Da? What you want is expensive. The only way you can pay is through immediate results.”

  I had an opening. It wasn’t much, but it was something. “If I get everything you want, we’re clean no matter what?”

  After a long pause Sergei replied, “No one will come for you again, and we will not look for you. But if you do not succeed, more will come and they will not be children. I know of one person in particular who would like to speak with you.”

  I remembered the huge Russian I shot, and the office that had been wiped out. “Whatever. Twenty-four hours and all will be forgotten?”

  “Da.”

  My grin returned, but Mikhail didn’t notice. The gunshot that came next filled the room. Mikhail’s body was pitched from the stool.

  “Mikhail?” Sergei’s voice was louder but unconcerned.

  “Dead,” I said. “It doesn’t matter, though. In twenty-four hours you will have forgotten him. Da?”

  “Da,” was the only reply I was given. I was sure it sounded more like “dead.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  I powered down the small, now-silent phone and put it into my pocket. The phone would be my only untraceable way to contact Sergei again. I picked up a bar rag and wiped the gun I had used, and then I put it into Mikhail’s hands. The scene wouldn’t hold up as a murder-suicide when the police looked at the ballistics, but it would steer attention away from a homicide by an outsider for a while. I used the rag to wipe down everything else I had touched and then I went through everyone’s pockets. I used the bar keys I found on Mikhail to lock up, as though it were closing time on a slow night. I wiped the keys with my sleeve and let them fall into a storm drain as I walked past my car. I did a small loop around the block to make sure no one was coming or already following me. When I was sure I was clean, I made my way back to the car and drove away.

  The drive went nowhere in particular for a while. I had to weigh out my options. The Russian mob was a growing force; they had fought Paolo and his Italians for years, and they showed no signs of weakening. They were getting stronger, and the capital they had meant they could afford to bring in heavy hitters — much heavier than Igor and Gregor. They would find me again if I didn’t come up with the disks, and it would be tough to walk out of an ambush a second time. The disks would be hard to find. If they were difficult to read, Paolo would need to outsource the job. It would take someone with the know-how, and with mob connections. There could not be many people who fit those criteria in the city. The only issue became who to ask. Questions are like wraiths — they take on a life of their own and they linger. Whoever I asked would understand what went on when they found out the person I asked about happened to get roughed up that very same night. If I had to ask someone for information, I would have to be sure it couldn’t lead back to me. It occurred to me during the drive that, almost at once, I had decided to steal back the information from Paolo. I would once again bite the hand that fed me. I thought about how I had fallen into this situation, and it made my head ache. The blood pulsed hard in my ears, and red ate away at the corners of my vision. I had been given a job that was more sensitive than I knew. No one had told me I was going up against the Russians; it was a suicide job. Then it hit me — this was Paolo’s payback for what I had done. Paolo was finally going to take the Russians down, and he was going to use me to do it. It was fitting, considering it was my fault that violence had resumed after Tommy’s death. I had judged the Russians wrong then. They were stronger than anyone knew and they welcomed open war in the streets. The Italians had fought for years since I helped kill Tommy Talarese; dozens of made men had been killed, and millions of dollars had been lost. When I reached out for information, Julian said he wanted to kill me but he wasn’t allowed. That was because Paolo wanted the Russians to kill me. He had Julian send me where they were sure to pick me up. Paolo used the Russians against me just as I had used them against him. I’m sure he had some kind of goose-and-gander analogy he found amusing. I wondered if I had been strung along for years by Paolo, or if the situation presented itself and he unleashed the anger he had held in check since I helped free Sandra. I couldn’t tell and I wasn’t sure I would ever know. Deep down the only thing I was sure of was that it had been a mistake to work for a man like Paolo Donati.

  Because I had been so well prepared for this life by my uncle, I had no connections outside my work. My uncle never brought anyone near the house. It might as well have been a space station; it was inaccessible to anything that operated in his working world. He met people in a coffee shop. The shop was owned by the daughter of a very well connected man, so nothing happened there except conversation. It was a franchise shop with a comical robin welcoming all inside the yellow and brown interior. The air was thick with smoke and the smells of coffee and baked sugar. The coffee shop was used as an office and my uncle checked in often. I came along every time, even if business was going to be discussed. Learning how to operate and who to operate with was all part of my education. Some days we were there alone for hours on end. If I was lucky, we sat at one of the tables that doubled as a video game. The thick plastic tabletop was scorched with cigarette burns and covered in a thick layer of grease from food and skin oil from filthy hands. It was the kind of table that destroyed the myth about a three-second rule for dropped food. Anything that touched that table was instant garbage.

  I remembered my slippery fingers as I gripped the joystick under the tabletop. I moved Pac-Man around the table under the coffee mugs and plates away from ghosts constantly following me. My uncle encouraged the game as though it were a poor man’s chess.

  “Rules allow you to win at this game,” he said. “Rules. Knowing your rules and theirs — knowing them makes the difference. Once you know their rules you can plan around them. Make their rules work against them. You understand, Will?”

  I nodded my response, not daring to take my eyes off the screen. “Yeah,” he went on. “The ghosts, they outnumber you, they always will, and if you kill one of ‘em word gets back fast, and they send more. They’re fast too, faster than you, but they have to follow the same paths as you do. That’s how you get them, boy. They follow your trail. You have to make them think they know where you’re going. Once you can make them think the way you want them to then you’re in control. It doesn’t
matter if they have more people, or if they’re faster. If you’re in control they’ll be where you want them to be. How can they ever touch you if you don’t let them? The plan separates you and them. It makes any situation work in your favour. You plan right, you’ll live through anything.”

  I didn’t bother to look up from the screen; he didn’t want me to anyway. I thought of my mom and dad. They died — the ghosts ate them whole. I thought about them as I pivoted in a corner, moving back and forth, waiting to be surrounded. Seconds before the armless ghosts touched me I ate the large white ball in the faded corner of the screen and turned the tables. I didn’t fight the grin as I screamed over the ghosts, watching their eyes run home. The ghosts were reborn again and again while I ran.

  “You use confrontation too much, boy. You always want to fight. Why fight at all when you could be somewhere else? All that fighting slows you down. It makes you slow, predictable. Those ghosts have the numbers to lose to slow you down. They always come back, and soon you’ll be in a corner without an advantage.”

  I didn’t answer as I set up in another corner to wait for the ghosts. I pivoted back and forth waiting on them. I watched the yellow and orange spectres close in, moving as one, almost on top of one another. I watched the pair approach and waited for them to enter the corner until one ghost broke from the path and moved to the other side of the corner. Watching the unexpected advance, I moved one step too far. The yellow ghost collided with me, and I watched the mouth of my Pac-Man roll back clockwise into oblivion. I stared at the greasy screen for a second before finally looking at my uncle. He wore a grin on his face. It was cold and scary.