The Last Hiccup (19 page)

The sounds of a train, perceived from within the belly of the beast, are nothing short of horrific. Vladimir didn't hear them so much as he felt them in his bones — the sporadic clanks and routine but often disarming screeching of the wheels as they navigated the tracks; the rattles and whirls that seeped from the windows, seats and floorboards; and deep within the locomotive, the endless chugging of the engine pulsing like an incised artery. Vladimir sat in his seat, hands firmly positioned over his ears, legs tucked up in an effort to conceal his body and make the world go away.

Hours ago Vladimir had stepped off the deck of a fishing boat that had just steered its way through boulder-sized chunks of ice along the Yenisey River. One of the fishermen, a foul-smelling man with three yellow teeth and an overcoat covered in fish entrails, told him that this would be their last trip for a month. “The river should have frozen over by now,” he said. “You might find yourself having trouble getting home.” Vladimir thought it was a miracle to even be alive after that harrowing journey. The constant swaying back and forth, the unstable floorboards that seemed ready at any moment to collapse into the river's fierce waiting arms, the odor of thousands of dead fish — it was all too much for him. Fifteen minutes after he boarded the boat, Vladimir leaned his head over the rail and deposited the green goulash overboard. The Yenisey River swallowed it up and gazed back at him for more.

Vladimir had hoped the tempest inside his mind would quell once he stepped off the boat. The hail had stopped altogether by the time they docked and he seemed to have escaped the black clouds of night. Dawn was rising. Vladimir fooled himself into believing the mechanics of the locomotive would purr him to sleep. They might have too, if not for the various odors in his assigned train car. They were another world altogether. With his hiccups gone, Vladimir's sense of smell magnified a hundred times over. Like a blind man in his seventh month without vision, he could smell the previous hundred passengers to have set foot in this small cabin for two. He smelled their sweat, their egg and cheese sandwiches, their perfumes, their seminal fluid and blood and lice and everything in between.

Vladimir looked at the clock on the wall. Forty minutes remained on his journey. He shut his window blind to keep out the burgeoning day and plugged his nose. Vladimir began counting the seconds until the train reached Moscow and he could finally escape into an open field and lie down on the snow-covered grass and pass out for an hour. The stillness of the white winter might save him yet.

But what about Doctor Namestikov? Vladimir couldn't forget why he'd traveled so far. The state was coming to kill Sergei. His doctor had asked for him by name. Vladimir placed his hand on the empty revolver in his breast pocket. Somehow he would have to procure some bullets and arrange a plan to save Sergei. Co-conspirators were needed, at the very least to provide a diversion; in a perfect scenario where they stormed the hospital gates waving burning planks of wood and pitchforks in the air. Vladimir's mind struggled to focus. Not just any plan would suffice. He needed something brilliant. If only it were him scheduled to be executed and not his beloved doctor. Sergei Namestikov would save him for sure.

Suddenly the door clicked open. Vladimir shot his legs out and sat straight up as a tall, thin Russian police officer entered the cabin. Vladimir immediately thought he was going to be arrested. Who had given him up to the Kremlin? he wondered. Was it his mother? That brute Discarov? That traitorous orange cat?

“Good morning,” the man said. He sat down in the seat opposite Vladimir, unfolded a pair of reading glasses, placed them on the bridge of his nose and began absently flipping through the pages of his morning paper. Vladimir waited, his eyes fixated on the police officer. Was he playing some kind of game? Was he waiting for Vladimir to make the first move? Because he would. He very well could. In mere seconds Vladimir could remove the weapon from his jacket and bash the officer into submission. Or was this lawman simply sitting in the cabin, reading his newspaper and waiting for the train to stop?

Vladimir listened to the man's short swift breaths. The police officer seemed to suffer from a physical disorder of the nose. The sheer amount and force of oxygen he expelled from his left nostril dwarfed what the right nostril could ever hope to generate. Despite its unevenness, Vladimir found this noise peaceful. Every few seconds the man was sure to breathe out again, and Vladimir found he could tune his entire body to its rhythm. It would have been a perfect way to end the journey if the man hadn't insisted on talking.

“Traveling to Moscow today?” he said.

“Yes,” Vladimir said.

The man set his paper down and lit a cigarette. “What type of business are you on?”

“I'm visiting a friend,” Vladimir said, in effect imparting an imperfect truth.

“I just got back from visiting my father,” the police officer said. “It's such a great shame to watch your parents get old. But I suppose they watched their parents get old and die and so did the generation before that.”

Vladimir noticed the man looking at him strangely. A few uncomfortable seconds passed before Vladimir realized that in this social situation, it was customary for him to speak next. He racked his brain for the proper words. “And so did the monkeys before them.”

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

“My doctor told me about it as a boy,” Vladimir said. “The evolution of the species. How we grew out of monkeys hundreds of thousands of years ago. Our great-great-great-great-grandparents were monkeys. They swung from trees and ate bananas and threw their feces at one another. It's a scientific fact.”

The man leaned forward. He crossed his eyebrows. “Are you a Christian man?”

Vladimir gave him a confused look.

“Do you believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior?”

“I don't suppose I've ever given it much thought,” Vladimir said.

“Perhaps you should.”

“You want me to consider this right now?” Vladimir said. In the back of his mind, he cursed himself for not beating a hasty retreat the moment this man had set foot in his cabin. Now, on top of the startling sounds and smells inside this cabin, his brain was forced to ponder the greatest theological question of all time.

“What better time than the present?” the officer said and returned to reading his newspaper. He huffed through his deviated septum, mumbled the word “monkeys” under his breath and flipped the page to the contemporary arts and dance section.

Vladimir stepped off the train and walked to the recently completed Krasnye Vorota Metro Station. The armed military presence had increased at the station. A checkpoint was set up with dozens of soldiers searching bags and inspecting passengers' identification. Instantly Vladimir worried that they would confiscate his weapon and arrest him. With a nervous perspiration building in his armpits, he presented the deceased soldier's papers and, to his surprise, the soldiers allowed him to bypass the line. He entered the central circular tunnel and found a map on the wall. That conversation on the locomotive had almost been the end of him. He couldn't imagine the horror that would accompany asking someone for directions. Vladimir stared at the map for what seemed an eternity before deciding to take the Metro north. He paid forty-five kopecks, a discount of five being that it was after the noon hour, and took the Metro three stops. The last station was one stop past his destination and, rather than return to the Metro with its guarded entranceways and cruel and confusing checkered floor pattern, he decided to walk the distance back to Sergei's hospital.

Moscow had transformed in the weeks that he'd been gone. Everywhere Vladimir looked he saw the war. Tanks lined the streets. Aircraft peppered the skies and soldiers were everywhere, thousands of them. They gathered in cafés, congregated in alleyways and marched in step down boulevards. Vladimir kept his head down and walked as fast as he could in the direction of the hospital. As he approached the gates, he saw two armed soldiers standing guard.

Vladimir hovered on the sidewalk across the street.

The clouds in the sky had returned, this time in the shapes of gray pieces of dough. The storm was gone but still his mind ached as though it were being pricked with needles. Each stabbing sensation came as an unexpected assault. The blood pulsing through his veins, his very breath, now felt wrong to him. Vladimir slumped down against the wall across from the hospital gates, only to realize that he must have looked like a beggar pleading for spare coins. Vladimir feared that some kindhearted woman would pass by and take pity on him. Her spare kopecks would slip out of her arthritic hands and land all over the sidewalk, where they would clatter and clang. All manner of well-bred citizens in the vicinity would look his way and condemn him for vagrancy.

Vladimir stood up. He clutched the empty gun in his jacket pocket and gazed at the hospital's mental health ward. The sparse windows were shielded by bars. Orderlies with hefty shoulder muscles patrolled the halls. Now armed guards surveilled the gates. An executioner was no doubt on his way with all manner of knives, nooses and scaffolds. Vladimir could never do this alone. That nurse's aide Strekov might be able to get him in the building, but then what? Who would procure a getaway vehicle? Who would drive the thing? Surely not Vladimir. He would steer it straight into a brick wall.

Vladimir needed someone to help him.

But who?

The lake was still. Afin, Sergei's former driver, the reformed butcher of Moscow, tugged on his fishing line. He really hadn't expected to catch any fish. A good portion of the lake was frozen over. Long thin sheets of ice formed symmetrical patterns above the water, and Afin had to thrash about with the oars to clear room just to traverse to the center. Now he sat in the cold, a flask of imperial vodka in his one hand, a fishing rod in the other. As dusk settled early, the stars in the sky appeared scattershot. From his vantage not even a single constellation held firm. Afin pulled in his line, slipped another frozen worm onto the hook and recast.

The years had caught up with him. His back ached. His neck was largely immobile. He could stare straight forward without discomfort, but turning to the side sent shivers of pain down his shoulders. No longer was he fit to drive a car. Afin's chin hung low like that of a defrocked Catholic priest. He knew well the job tasked upon him. Men in suits had made it perfectly clear. Men in suits hid their intentions behind formality and rules. They masked their evil well. At least thieves and murderers sometimes admitted to themselves what they were doing was wrong.

Nevertheless, the hour drew near.

He'd once been such a nice little boy. Could he really have changed so much from his days as a child casting stones across his lake back home? Afin picked up his oars and started back for shore. The time for peace in his soul had expired.

“You're a tricky sort, I'll give you that,” Markus said. Eleven seconds earlier he'd opened an envelope and read a letter containing a single sentence — “Bishop to Queen 4.” Markus shuffled over to the chessboard at the far corner of his office and moved the black bishop. He stared down at the pieces that remained. His pawns were decimated. He had no knights, only rooks and bishops left to protect his king. To an uneducated observer, it might have seemed like he had a fighting chance. In truth, Markus knew the situation was much more dire.

Months ago, when they had first begun exchanging letters, Professor Tillberry had backed himself into a corner. He'd opened, as expected, with the Sicilian Defense. That was brave of him, Markus thought. Tillberry's black pieces were laying claim to the center of the board and Markus's own white army would have to be equally as aggressive lest they surrender complete control. Soon enough, though, Tillberry had a crisis of conscience. After implementing the Najdorf Variation, essentially applying relentless pressure to White's pawn at King 4 — a course of action that was not only completely expected but almost a virtual certainty (Markus would have bet his soul on his opponent's fifth through seventh moves) — Tillberry relented and momentarily backed away. It was a simple move, receding his knight back into the king's fold. But it was cowardly as well. Markus took over. He dominated. Tillberry's pawns fell like infantry storming blind onto a beach with no hope of ever making it to dry land. Markus was in complete control. What a fool Tillberry had been.

Now Markus wasn't so sure. Could his opponent have been lulling him into a false sense of security all along? Was this latest move a blatant act of folly or the most clever showing of gamesmanship to which Markus had ever been privy? And what on Earth had happened to his white knights? They were there just a few weeks ago. How could he remember the beginning and the end but nothing of the middle?

Markus smiled and angled the black knight to face due north. It was dark outside, evening having commenced before the dinner hour on this winter day. He stretched his short arms in the air and returned his misshapen hands to the safe embrace of his canes. “Ah, Tillberry, you are a problem for another day,” he said and turned to leave his office.

Standing in his open doorway was the dark figure of a man with wide white eyes, his wool cap and coat damp from the day's rain. Markus stopped dead in his tracks. A dreadful fright shot through his body. He'd always known this day would come. He would have recognized this dark figure anywhere. The devil child had grown into a man. The hiccupping — that infernal yelp that had seemed incurable for so long — had disappeared. Still Markus had no doubt.

It was Sergei's protégé.

At long last Vladimir had come to kill him.

In a sudden, awkward shuffling of his feet, Markus turned and ran back toward his desk. His right cane lost its grip on the hardwood floor and Markus tumbled to the ground. He struggled to stand up. His right hand, with just the partial thumb and index finger, grabbed hold of an office chair. He flashed a quick look at that dark figure standing in his doorway. Vladimir had yet to move. Markus fumbled for his keys, found the short brass one and pushed it into the desk drawer. He pulled out a Webley Break-Top Revolver, the standard-issue service pistol for the armed forces of the United Kingdom. It was lighter than usual. “Curses,” Markus muttered. He'd taken it out to clean it just two months ago and had forgotten to replace the bullets.

He pointed the empty gun at Vladimir.

“I always knew you'd come for me,” Markus said. His useless right hand fished through the drawer for the bullets. Vladimir reached into his jacket and pointed a gun at Markus.

Markus froze in terror.

The room fell silent.

Vladimir's dark eyes hadn't changed. His stare was as vacuous as ever. Only now he towered in the air. Markus knew instantly that there would be no reasoning with him, no truce, no negotiation. Slowly he set the gun down on the desk. He closed his eyes and thought about his parents, the brother he'd wronged all those years ago. How could he, a man of so few options, not be expected to bed his brother's wife? For Christ's sake, she propositioned him, she seduced him, she ravaged Markus in the back seat of a trolley car. He pushed his brother's adulterous bride out of his brain. One's last thoughts should be of something good and pure. The taste of pink lemonade on the first day of spring. Caramelized apples. The smell of mint.

“If you're going to do it, be quick about it,” he said.

Markus braced himself. Vladimir still hadn't moved.

“Blast you and blast Sergei for releasing your curse upon me!” he said.

To Markus's surprise, Vladimir lowered his gun.

He stepped forward.

The dwarfling flinched.

“I don't understand the language you're speaking,” Vladimir said.

Markus's ears perked. Suddenly he realized he'd been yelling at Vladimir in his native English. The boy must have thought it was complete nonsense. Markus paused. He knew this type of criminal mind. He'd seen it throughout his practice over the years. Vladimir wanted to taunt him. He wanted to engage him in conversation and then launch into a long, drawn-out monologue before finally carrying out his nefarious deeds. And Markus, without a single bullet to fire, was powerless to refuse.

“What do you want?” he said in Russian.

Vladimir removed his wool cap and placed his gun on the table. “I need your help,” he said.