The operation was running long, and Marko Hushchyn knew he was not the only one growing tired of it. Ardent the hero hung in the air above the city, ready to defend it if he must, knowing he was unlikely to be asked to do so. He had done nothing for more than an hour now, because there was nothing to be done; his emissant’s abilities were inappropriate for a less-than-lethal assignment. Now the Knyaz was dead, and apparently Sergei as well. The actually useful half of their task force was dead, and Marko was still helpless.
Not literally helpless. Outright killing the children was still possible. It would be easy, even. The new emissant—it would be a very pleasant change to fight someone who did not pull an entirely new weapon out of their ass at the last moment, but this evidently was not meant to be—defended herself quite well, but he was confident in Ardent’s ability to overwhelm that defense. The girl was tired, recovering from prolonged ambivalent shock, and (he assumed) even more irrational than usual.
From his vantage at the edge of Atyrau, as close to the action as his halo permitted, Ardent saw her emerge from the car, a tiny blonde stick-figure. She’d already dropped her new friend, leaving herself wide open. One rock would blot her out of existence; she would never even see it coming. She’d come out of the passenger seat, so somebody else was driving. Fatima, maybe. Two hits would eliminate two enemies of the Russian state. A fitting end to the story. But what then?
A Knyaz and an oprichnik were dead, dead at the hands of children and a single American. That would be difficult to hide from … various interested parties. And there were many interested parties. Many people watching, from every angle, looking to make their move. Even before today’s disaster, the brats had killed one oprichnik, and nearly killed another—the one currently sitting in a cushioned desk chair in an office in downtown Atyrau, staring at the ceiling and pondering his options—and disabled or killed several dozen clairvoyants, plus sundry military personnel and civilians stretching across the southwest of the country, et cetera. They were a massive embarrassment, and a liability.
The logical thing to do would be to barrage the car and a quarter-kilometer of road around it to be sure, and put them all down like mad dogs, children or not. But this was Holy Rus’. Logic and the public weal had little bearing on decision-making at the upper echelons. At least, by those who wished to remain in the upper echelons, and not buried in an unmarked hole.
Nadia made her dazed way around the site, wasted a few seconds gawking over the charred corpse of Sergei Yefimov, and found her incapacitated mentor inside what was left of the late oprichnik’s car. Incapacitated, or dead? Somewhere in between, Marko suspected. He was tempted to destroy the car before Ruslan could become involved—her survival was optional, from the Kremlin’s perspective—but decided against it. First because it might enrage the children into renewing the fight, and second because a revived Keisha Graham would be their best chance at getting the hell out of Russian territory, to go be somebody else’s problem.
The child scampered back to her own vehicle, and held a protracted conversation with those inside. Ruslan would be very tired after the morning’s exertions. It spoke for the resilience of youth that any of them were mobile at all. Could the boy—ah, yes, he could. The lovely Saray appeared, yet again. Not as bright and fresh as she had been this morning, but then none of them were. She lingered for just a few seconds, crying over the carnage, and for a brief second Marko wondered if the boy were addled enough to accidentally revive Sergei while he was at it. No, as it turned out. The black woman emerged from the rear of the car, weeping like her savior, while the burnt corpse remained burnt. Very good.
Then the beautiful princess disappeared, and in his office some kilometers away Marko let out his breath. No blackbird. The child had better self-control now, maybe, or else he had passed out from the strain. Marko didn’t care which.
The rest was irrelevant, and only his interest in drama kept him at his voyeur’s window. The woman became visibly angry with the child, gesturing back at the middling town they had just left, then at Ardent. Well, if she was worried about him, he would gladly abandon the stage. They could leave the country through this city, for all he cared, so long as they didn’t level it in the process—but no. Something else was happening. Another person was coming out of the car, a man, from the passenger seat. Sergei’s clairvoyant. What was his name? He was all better now, unlike Marko’s Leonova, who was en route to the nearest hospital, waiting for the halo to drop so she could be properly treated with modern computerized equipment.
Marko saw no reason to deny her longer. He waited only to watch Keisha Graham drag a trembling Lyudmila out of the driver’s seat, then let Ardent go with a laugh. He’d never liked Lyudmila, and she didn’t know anything too critical. She knew Marko’s identity, of course, and that was a nuisance, but he suspected the Americans would need to know his identity before too long anyway. He wished dear Lyudmila the very happiest rest of her life in an undocumented facility. Sergei’s clairvoyant—Amelin, that was his name—probably hadn’t done anything to deserve that, but he’d likely have died without medical aid.
Slowly Marko rose from his chair, and stretched out the kinks. His fiftieth birthday was nearer than he cared to think about. An unknown future awaited him. He would probably not be going back to his theater in Simferopol, after all this. He had accepted that. At the moment, he had no greater ambition than to survive, and make his way back to his home and his beloved Zoya. That was enough for him, to see her again. But if it just so happened that the best way out was up and through …
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Killing the children now would, he was nearly certain, saddle him with the blame for this whole fiasco. It would be proof that he had never wanted the operation to succeed, or evidence that he was a paid saboteur, or some damned thing like that. Capturing them was not a practical or credible option, if it ever had been. Merely retreating from the field would earn him only accusations of incompetence from the surviving Knyazya, most of whom had been away from active duty long enough to lose all sympathy for real warriors. He had to retreat—but not empty-handed. Not without an accomplishment to point to.
Marko could think of one possibility only, and the timeframe for achieving it was limited. He poked his head out the door and shouted for Valentina Zhuk, who arrived inside of a minute.
“Take me to the nearest elementary school,” he told her, cutting off her request for orders. “Now.”
“You realize it’s Sunday, sir?” She did not ask for an explanation. Likely she was clever enough to come to the same conclusion he had, and saw this as her own way out as well. At least they’d found him a competent assistant.
“Shit. Fine. Nearest church, then. Not mosque, church. Oh, and get Vasily to stand down, if you can. He’s not doing any more good out there.” If he ever had. “On second thought, see if you can get someone to call him in, and meet us outside the church. Without Zenith!”
Valentina led him to her car without question or comment, making calls to the appropriate people along the way. God bless her. Marko felt the tension melt out of his shoulders as they moved. The worst was over. Probably.
Really, this was all his fault, for sending that damned e-mail. He wasn’t sure if he regretted it or not. He had no clue what kind of “research” they had in mind for these children, but they had caused nothing but misery from the moment they crossed the border. Atyrau had gotten off lightly—and most of the damage it had sustained had been inflicted by young Vasily, before Nadia and Fatima came back to the town. If a little treason was all it took to discourage the Knyazya from replacing trained adults with teenagers, then Marko could live with that. Especially if he prevented them from putting a bullet in his own skull so they could ‘improve’ Ardent a few years down the road.
This was of course a deeply ironic way of solving that problem, but he would get his bullet even sooner if he did anything else.
The nearest church was actually a cathedral, an ugly one with pink sides and a multicolored roof. The service had been somewhat delayed by several hours of paraphysical warfare, but it would take more than that to keep Russian believers out of church in the middle of Lent. It was probably better this way; this would filter out all the less devout. Devout children would be more obedient. The last thing he needed would be to pick up a little hooligan by mistake.
He sent Valentina in with orders to requisition at least a half-dozen likely minors for the service of the state. For five, ten, fifteen minutes he waited in the car, studying his cross. The wolf’s head at the center, for loyalty and ferocity, and the four brooms for arms, emblems of Ivan IV. He was called to sweep Russia’s enemies out of the country. In a roundabout way, he was doing just that; if Keisha Graham had to be the one doing the sweeping, well, the important thing was that they were gone.
Valentina came out with two boys and a girl, and an apologetic look on her face. Marko’s car was much the same as the Knyaz’s, and offered plenty of room and comfort for all three to join him in the back. Judging by their faces, they didn’t appreciate the honor. Probably they thought he was some kind of pervert. “Not much to choose from, I take it,” he called to the front. Valentina shook her head. “Where is Vasily?”
“He was already off the boat when they called. Boris and Misha were planning to take the fight to the Marshalls on land—“
“God damn it!”
“But we told them that was not acceptable, and to stand down, because you were formally assuming command.”
“Did they argue?”
“I’m told they were relieved.”
“Good. Where are they now?”
“On their way.”
“Have them meet us at the hotel.” This did not reassure the children, and he smiled at them, holding out his open hands. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You will not be harmed.” All three stared back at him, eyes wide with terror. This, unfortunately, was a normal and sane reaction to an unplanned meeting with an officer of the state. He looked them over. All three were somewhere between eight and twelve, ethnically Slavic … about all he needed. Valentina had done well.
He did his best to calm them down on the way to the hotel, and learned that their names were Roman, Anatoly, and Elizaveta. Roman and Anatoly were fraternal twins, and had been taken from altar service, and Father Arseny was not happy about that. Elizaveta enjoyed running, was fond of animals, and wanted to work in the zoo when she grew up.
They relaxed somewhat more when they got to the hotel—the city’s finest—and met Vasily, who looked thoroughly harmless. They did not believe him when he said he was an oprichnik, but pretended to, because they had been brought up well. They would do. Once they were secure in Marko’s room, he told them that by the end of the day one of them would be an oprichnik him- or herself, and another would effectively have joined the Knyazya. At this, they looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Maybe he had.
Men arrived with dowsers as he briefed them on the necessary techniques for adopting a familiar. It wasn’t an especially sunny day for April, but earlier would be better. He wound up hurrying them out the door before they had had time to adjust. But then, if he’d given them that, they would have stayed in that room for a week. It was a cruel thing he did to them, much crueler than they could ever guess, but however long they lived, neither they nor their families would ever want for anything again. And it was the only way forward.
They soon found the remains of both emissants; Kist was drifting towards Atyrau, while Snowdrop preferred the shelter of the little villages to the north. It wasn’t noon yet, and they would have places to shelter from the sun. They would have a fair chance of recovering both, and the Russian state would not only recover two valuable tools, but save themselves the humiliation of admitting someone had killed a Knyaz. Would that be enough to save Marko’s head? He thought it would. And if he happened to make friends with one or more of these little darlings along the way, he would have a sympathetic, naive, and likely talkative resource inside the Kremlin. Something could be made of that.
Yes, he probably was going a little mad. Certainly he felt manic. Was that any wonder, under the circumstances? This was a mad country, run by madmen, and he’d given years of his life in their service. The Soviets had been bad. The Whites were worse. The madness was catching. They all had it now.
How did you fix a mad country? It was a difficult business, reforming lunatic men. A whole nation would be harder. The best way to go about it, he thought, would be to make a clean start. Decapitate the old leadership, throw out the old trash, and start fresh. But you would need a really fresh start, to bring in someone totally new, uncontaminated by the old poisons and prejudices.
Really, you had to start with a child.