Midnight come again

MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN

Kate Shugak 10

DANA STABENOW

Jane Adams

St. Martin's/Minotaur Paperbacks Titles by Dana Stabenow Midnight Come Again The Singing of the Dead

A Fine and Bitter Snow (Available in hardcover)

MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN

DANA STABENOW

St. Martin's Paperbacks

NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped book."

MIDNIGHT COME AGAIN

Copyright 2000 by Dana Stabenow.

Excerpt from The Singing of the Dead copyright 2001 by Dana Stabenow.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

All chapter headings are lines from poems from Mary TallMountains's

The Light on the Tent Wall, reprinted with permission of the American Indian Studies Center, UCLA, copyright Regents of the University of California.

ISBN: 0-312-97876-6

Printed in the United States of America St. Martin's Press hardcover edition I May 2000

St. Martin's Paperbacks edition I May 2001

St. Martin's Paperbacks are published by St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.10 98765432

For jeannie delavern stabenow thanks for loving dad

PROLOGUE. st. petersburg, march 25

The elegant columns and fabulous spires of the old city seemed to float in the pale gold light of the soft spring dawn, adrift on a sea of morning mist.

And why not, thought Kiril Davidovitch, bouncing in his seat as the armored truck lurched through yet another pothole. With Lake Ladoga to the northeast and the Gulf of Finland to the southwest and the Neva River and its many tributaries between, the buildings designed with such grace and style by Peter the Great's imported French and Italian architects almost three centuries before were in perfect position to set sail at the first high tide.

He propounded this thought to the truck's driver. The burly man with the bushy eyebrows deepened his scowl, shifted down to take the bridge over the Kanal Griboyrdova and growled, "Good. Ship the whole goddamn place across the Atlantic and let the Americans buy it. They'll buy anything, even," he sneered, "St. Petersburg."

Fyodor still resented the return to Leningrad's original name. It was an insult, to the state, to Communism and to Lenin himself, that poor mummified bastard. He'd roll over in his glass casket if he knew.

After seven months of riding next to him, Kiril was aware of Fyodor Chirikov's deep resentment over the fall of Communism in Mother Russia.

That fall had, in Fyodor's view, led directly to the loss of his subsidized apartment in the Nevsky Prospekt, which in turn compelled him to take his present job with Security Services, Inc., one of the new companies springing up like weeds all across the new nation, half of which were fronts for what Bobbie Batista had taken to calling the Russian Mafia.

Kiril loved Bobbie Batista. He loved CNN, and the ten-second clips of pictures showing him life in the West. One day he hoped to travel there, and perhaps convey his respects to Ms. Batista in person.

Just past the Gostiny Dvor Department Store Fyodor swerved the truck around a shabby orange barricade with

"Detour!" marked in large, hand-painted letters. Kiril didn't flinch.

Nobody obeyed street signs in the city. They had a nasty habit of having been set there by thieves who had the intention of separating you from your vehicle and putting it up for sale in pieces in the city marketplace a kilometer away.

Fyodor spoke Kiril's thoughts out loud. "Lousy thieves. Stalin would have known how to deal with them."

Kiril was more tolerant. What could you expect? The only people who had any knowledge of a free market were the crooks who had been running the ubiquitous and extremely profitable black market since before Lenin was elected. It was natural that the crooks would step in to fill the gaps in supply and demand, in production and distribution.

He, Kiril, was content to wear a stiff blue uniform and ride shotgun, like John Wayne in Stagecoach, to earn enough to buy black bread and sausages and the occasional bottle of vodka. It was also enough to pay for his own bedroom in a shared flat, to which more often than not he could entice a girl to share his bed. His bed was his most prized possession; a four-poster relic of a more gracious (Fyodor would say degenerate) age, with a marvelously carved headboard and box springs, and a mattress and linens he had cheerfully beggared himself to buy.

Which reminded him of the little cashier in the black sedan in front of them. She was pretty, with smooth skin, velvety brown eyes and little breasts like apples pushing up the front of her suit jacket. It had been cold outside the bank that morning as they stood waiting for the branch manager to unlock the door. The little cashier had had no coat on, and the rough wool fabric over her breasts had peaked where her nipples had hardened. He would have liked to have slipped a hand beneath that jacket to see if those breasts were as firm as they looked. She had caught his appreciative glance and her smooth skin had flushed a delicate pink, the color of the dawn sky above, but she hadn't looked angry and she hadn't looked away.

The neat blond head was framed now in the rear window of the sedan, and he imagined that she could feel the weight of his gaze, enough so that he wasn't surprised when she turned to flash him a shy smile. The truck's windshield was masked with plate steel, leaving only a narrow horizontal slit through which to see and be seen, but Kiril knew she smiled at him. The branch manager next to her must have thought so, too, and must not have liked it, because he snapped something that had her obediently facing forward again. Strands of blond hair cupped her collar in a neat, shining line. Kiril imagined running his fingers through that hair, imagined the little cashier rubbing her head against his palm like a cat, purring like a cat, too. She would purr, he was sure of it. He couldn't wait to find out if he was right. That night, perhaps.

Fyodor observed all this with a sour expression. "The Romeo of the Rentacops strikes again."

Kiril grinned and gave a modest shrug. "What can I say? The ladies, they love me."

Fyodor grunted. The heavy truck bounced again as they ran over another, deeper pothole. "Whoa there, pardner," Kiril said in his best Duke impression, and grabbed hold of the armrest to keep from rolling into Fyodor's lap. "Watch it. Don't want to upset all those rubles riding around in back."

Fyodor grunted again, disdainfully this time. He didn't approve of money, or currency transfers, or banks either, for that matter.

Property, all property, should be held in common, by all citizens.

Profit, especially profit earned by lending money at extortionate rates to those who knew no better, was an abomination.

Still, it wouldn't do to lose their escort entirely. The truck slowed almost to a halt. "Can you see the soldiers?"

Kiril bent down to peer into the rearview mirror. He laughed. "Yes. One fell off the outside of the troop truck. They've stopped to wait for him to catch up."

Fyodor swore and double-clutched into second. The gears crashed together and the armored truck began to jerk forward.

Kiril braced both hands against the dash and tried to keep his spine from snapping off at the neck. "What are you doing," he said, dutiful but not really alarmed. It was only Fyodor, rebelling against the new world order on schedule. "You know the rules, we wait for the soldiers."

"Fuck their mothers," Fyodor said, and broke another rule by opening the door to spit contemptuously. The door crashed shut again and they roared over the Nevsky Prospekt bridge, only to be brought to an abrupt halt on the other side when Fyodor cursed and slammed on the brakes.

Kiril's hat fell over his eyes and the knuckles of one hand hurt where it had slipped and hit the dash. He swore a few times himself and shoved his hat back on his head.

The square was teeming with soldiers, commanded by a tall, broad-shouldered captain in a pristine uniform with knife-sharp creases down the legs of his pants and red tabs on his epaulets. He strode toward them, an expression of sharp annoyance in his hard blue eyes. His cheekbones were high and flat in a narrow face and his mouth was a wide pair of thin lips pressed together in an uncompromising line. Kiril, who had served thirteen hellish months in Chechnya before the pullout, recognized at a glance the look of a professional officer, one who got the job done and never bothered before the fact to count the cost in soldiers' lives. No matter what the situation was, no matter what Fyodor said, they were going to wind up in the wrong, Kiril thought glumly, and cast an anxious look at the sedan in front of them. The little blond cashier had twisted around in her seat and was watching the officer approach the truck. He hoped that wasn't admiration he saw in her eyes.

The army officer arrived at Fyodor's door and thumped it with an imperious fist. Without much hope Kiril said, "Don't open it, Fyodor, you know it's against the rules." Fyodor ignored him and opened it anyway, and Kiril gave up and sat back with a sigh.

"Captain Kakhovka," the officer said. "Fifth Battalion, assigned to assist the St. Petersburg militia in keeping the peace." And not liking the situation, Kiril thought. The captain would rather be in Chechnya, slaughtering civilian rebels and having his own troops slaughtered in turn.

"What's the problem, captain?" Fyodor said.

The captain, still tight-lipped, said, ' were reports of violence in front of the General Staff Building this morning, a workers' demonstration gone bad." Fyodor's lip curled. "Another one?" The captain gave a curt nod, his field cap squared just so on his brow. "We've had information that some had weapons. You should have stopped at the barricade."

Fyodor spread his hands. "What barricade, Captain? There was no barricade." He looked at Kiril for conformation.

Kiril opened his big brown eyes as far as they would go. "No, no barricade."

Captain Kakhovka looked skeptical. Kiril didn't blame him. "You'll have to go around. We've rerouted the traffic down Plekhanova."

Indeed, the black sedan was already turning. The little blonde was still twisted around in her seat, wide curious eyes on the truck.

Fyodor muttered a curse and slammed the door to put the truck in gear again and jerk forward in pursuit of the sedan. In the rearview mirror Kiril noticed the captain waving the truck filled with soldiers to a halt, and that the soldier who had fallen off the truck into the pothole almost fell off again. He laughed.

"What?" Fyodor said grumpily, and, when Kiril relayed the news, grumbled, "We'll have to go all the way down to Gorokhovaya, maybe even Antonenko."

Plekhanova was a narrow street lined with tall, thin buildings blocking out the morning sun. Its surface was even rougher than Nevsky, and the noise the steel plates of the truck made as they rumbled down it precluded any conversation. Fortunately there was hardly any traffic, Kiril thought, because between the narrowness of the street, the width of the truck and Fyodor's sunny disposition, oncoming vehicles would have been at severe risk of winding up in someone's parlor.

They came upon an intersection with another, smaller street with no street sign and were there halted by yet another soldier. "What now?"

Fyodor grumbled.

The soldier was carrying an automatic rifle over one shoulder. He waved at them, indicating an even tinier street to their right. The black sedan obediently turned down it.

"What the hell?" Fyodor said. "This isn't the way to Gorokhovaya." The soldier looked stern and waved again, and Fyodor swore and jammed the truck into gear. "Goddamn military. Fuck all their mothers. We are never going to get our lunch."

This street was if possible even narrower than the previous one, the houses smaller and leaning up against one another like they could use the support. They weren't fifty feet down it when the taillights of the black sedan flashed six feet off then" front bumper. This time Kiril had himself braced against the dash before Fyodor stamped on the brake.