The hot day began with a frost of minus twenty-five.
Brr. It had been a long time since I was that cold.
In two hours I made it to Kushchino, drove around the capital of the chemical industry and, alas, spotted nothing.
Having pondered my bad luck a little, I decided to park Vova in the nearest car park so as to inspect the local sights on foot. The little town turned out to be small, consisting of a dozen streets of five-storey blocks, one central square crowned by the cube of the town council, and a great quantity of waste ground with no access roads. Beyond each patch of waste ground, as far as the eye could reach, stretched clusters of some sort of structures. The proud title of «Dacha» would not stick to those structures by any means. It was doubtful that in one of these plank sheds golden-handed Leftys with swift-minded Newtons were conjuring over test tubes and measuring glasses, cooking up infernal mixtures and decanting them into ampoules of 10 ml capacity, as indicated by Hans. Very doubtful.
Having tramped the lanes and back alleys of Kushchino, I finally ran my nose into a mighty, solemn, fundamental fence. Beyond the fence rose the haughty, pompous, yellow-walled building. NIIFarm. I had begun the search for the dacha from it that morning. To it I had returned in the middle of the day with no result.
Maybe blow it up? There’s enough explosive for one wing. If Old Man Frost takes away my reproductive capacity today, I shall certainly mark the event with fireworks.
The metal gates slowly, with a creak, slid apart. A little truck drove out of the institute’s depths and, with a faint clinking, rolled past me and off somewhere.
Clinking as it rolled!
Driven on by the frantic hammering of my heart, I raced to the frost-covered Vovka and loaded myself into the cabin, muttering: «Now, now, Voldemar, let’s not slack off». On the second attempt I breathed life into my friend’s cylinders with the starter.
Vovka sneezed, coughed and started.
Without wasting a second on warming up the engine – sorry, brother, time trouble! – I let out the clutch and, whipping up little snow flurries from under the wheels, threw myself into pursuit of the decrepit ZIL.
The truck wound about the icy country roads for a couple of versts, its rear end skidding desperately, and finally drove into some dacha settlement. There it dragged itself as far as an unremarkable tumbledown little house and stopped. The driver and his passenger jumped out of the vehicle and disappeared behind the old blackened gates. I braked, marked the little house, turned round and drove back a couple of hundred metres. There was no point showing myself at the site of the future conflagration.
Fkh. Ekh. Ukhu…
Having sat for about five minutes and reflected that sometimes the tail of the blue bird flutters over my head too, I sighed and threw open the door. Handed my body over to Grandfather Frost. Nothing else for it, the job has to be done. I opened the boot, took the pistol out of jerrycan number four – black stripe – stuck it in the holster under my left arm and, walking slowly, set off for the shack.
Crunch. Crunch… Crunch…
The snow crunched quietly underfoot. Surely and inexorably as the collapse of imperialism, I approached the truck and waited for the moment when… And there it was. The driver flung the gates wider, jumped into the cab and started the engine. Then he pulled forward a little, back and left, forward and right, full reverse. The vehicle disappeared into the yard.
Got it!
I walked past, noting as I went how two not particularly sturdy lads had set about unloading twenty-litre carboys of a transparent liquid from the back. And all the while I didn’t forget to rejoice, to exult, to boil over with happiness! Hurrah! I had found the place of which there would soon remain a black circle on white snow with a ten-metre crater in the middle.
Phew!
I walked to the end of the street, stood there a couple of minutes and, hearing the light drone of an engine, decided to turn back. Twenty paces on, the ZIL drove past me with its headlights on. Strange, I hadn’t noticed dusk falling. That was in my favour. Time to move to active measures.
I flicked away an imaginary cigarette and set off for Vova with an even, springy stride. I needed to get the contents of the white-topped jerrycan out of the boot and attach it to the shack where they were cooking up something or other and which nobody was guarding. Ridiculous.
They cook up poison worth millions and can’t see to their security.
Drawing level with the gates, I slowed my pace a little, smiled at one scatterbrained little thought and turned aside from my intended route. Opened the wicket gate, crossed the yard in seven paces and, kicking in the bolted door, burst like a whirlwind into a little room stinking of chemicals. Now it was a matter of technique – to show the local company who Arbalet is and what he’s served with.
Before the torn-off door had had time to hit the floor, I had assessed the disposition. Kicked the near lad, a stocky one standing with his back to me, under the knee, and instantly, with a left hook to the temple, accelerated his fall sideways. Number one done. Number two turned out to be tall, about my height probably, and quick. He even managed to draw his arm back. What is more, his fist covered half the distance from his shoulder to my face. Half. Then the trajectory broke, crumpled, and the fist followed its owner to the floor. You have to be quick reacting to a kick in the groin. Who’s next? I won’t keep you waiting. The main thing is pressure and drive, and not to forget the smile while you’re at it. There may be ladies present. So, where are they? None – three little men in the corners of the room and not a single admiring female spectator. Hmm. We shall act simply, effectively and intelligibly, without any music-hall tricks. I made for the one who was, in my view, the most dangerous. Aha, that’s what it is. A knife flashed in his hand! This is going to hurt, oop! I feinted with my body right, then left, and caught the darting knife hand by the wrist. Then I raised it and spun three hundred and sixty degrees about my own axis. The knife-bearer, with his arm twisted up behind his back, fell face first to the floor. Of course I shouldn’t have pulled off a stunt like that. I should have knocked the knife out of his hands with a plain blow, cracked him on the head and that would have been the whole business. As it was, I lost time on the pirouette. Look at that, two in padded jackets have bolted for the door.
– Stand still! – I bellowed.
The runners instantly turned into liers-down. They crashed to the floor, covering their heads with their hands. Strange. Nobody was even hitting them yet.
Terribly pleased with myself, I surveyed the field of battle, the five stunned weaklings scattered across its planes, and understood that I had landed in a heap of shit you don’t wash off.
All around lay bottles of every description, some empty, some filled with some kind of liquid, some with labels reading «Ruskaya Vodka», «Stolichnaya Vodka», «Privet», some without labels. Some of the filled bottles were corked. The rest gave off a bad smell of alcohol. On the floor lay labels, screw caps, other rubbish. I went up to the twenty-litre carboys that had just been unloaded and sniffed at the smell coming off them. Spirit, apparently.
Exactly, it was spirit.
So it was being brought from the institute by the truckload, mixed in a tub with water dolefully trickling from a little tap, and poured into bottles. The result was a branch of the celebrated Kristall distillery which nobody knew or had heard of. Glory to the underground assistants of the Russian vodka industry! Only what did that have to do with me and my assignment? A mistake had occurred.
I sat down on a stool. The lads, frightened to the point of complete paralysis, began coming to themselves and stirring. I took out the piece and scratched my chin.
– Who’s in charge here?
Silence.
I met the eyes of the one nearest to me. The lad was lying on the floor with one leg unnaturally bent under him.
– Dislocated?
– I… I think so.
– I’ll break it in a minute.
Little beads of sweat came out on his white forehead.
– Or maybe I should shoot your balls off? – I continued thoughtfully. Then I was silent a while and asked: – So who’s in charge here?
The lad nodded his head towards his neighbour, lying face down beside him.
– Hey, commander, – I called to him.
He raised his face, gripped by a fine trembling.
– Chief, let’s step outside for a minute of business conversation, – I suggested in a friendly way, with affection in my voice. Then I asked peaceably: – Only tell your little eagles not to twitch, to lie quietly on the floor and behave like mice. Agreed?
The local commander nodded his head, got up slowly and slowly walked out of the hut. I followed him. Now the hardest part was beginning – a heart-to-heart with the client. I thought about where to start and sighed deeply, put out. The forthcoming heartfelt conversation might be hindered by my accent, which had appeared from God knows where. Mila had gone on and on about it the other day: «You look like Regimantas Adomaitis now, Sashka. It’s so classy! I always loved Baltic actors.» Damn it. They picked the wrong moment to secede. All right. We’ll reflect on geopolitics later. Time to get to work.
– What’s your name? – I asked the commander of the local tavern-keepers, having examined him carefully. Broad-shouldered and thickset, but still just a kid. He wasn’t even twenty. His little eyes darted about, his little hands shook, and he probably needed to piss.
– S-sergei.
– I see. So here’s the situation, Seryoga. I am Major Banionis of the Fifth Department of the FSB for the Moscow region. Does that tell you anything?
The lad, already whiter than chalk, began faintly to glow with fear. Yes, the FSB signboard told him something.
– Calm down. My department deals with narcotics. And this amateur enterprise of yours falls under the article on economic crimes. The economic crimes squad will be dealing with you, if we don’t come to an arrangement now. Understood?
– H-how much? – the underground vintner squeezed out.
– Sery, don’t insult me. Better try to get the sense of what I’m about to say. According to my plan, by New Year I have to shut down two points where they manufacture dope. I’ve got one, we’ll take care of it next week. With the second there’s a problem. Two days ago a tip came in about your shack, saying that lads here are cooking up all sorts of filth, which is why I dropped in on you. You understand, I’ve been interested in your district for a long time. I’ve found a few things, little facts and so on. And now, follow the thought, some smart operators decided to send me down a false trail – they gave up your place. They thought I’d tie you up and settle down. Do you follow?
– Uh-huh.
– I understood from the start that it was an empty run. That’s why I came alone. If I’d had special forces with me, there wouldn’t be a living thing left here. And afterwards you can work out for all the good it does whether they were knocking out narcotics here or bottling vodka. You lot would certainly be lying in a row with your bare feet and your eyes closed, shot for resisting the organs. Do you feel what this smells of?
– Uh-huh.
Why does he keep grunting like that? I haven’t harnessed him, as far as I know. All right, enough hanging noodles on his ears. The client seems ripe, let’s get down to business.
– Now count it up. I’ve got exactly two weeks left before New Year. I won’t get to the sharp lads who set you up in that time. Two ways are left: either blow your place to hell and stencil you lot out here and there, or you lead me to these chemists. You probably know the locals well. So go on, think, you’ve got a minute.
Pale Seryozha’s lower jaw began to tremble finely… Go on, think, think… Aha, something like a glimmer of hope flickered in his little eyes:
– But I don’t know anyone… – he bleated.
Bad move. What now?
– …but maybe Fat Mikha can help.
Good lad!
– Let’s go to Mikha’s.
– Can I take a leak?
– Go on. Only don’t wet your trousers, big operator.