A Good Old-Fashioned Future (16 page)

“Lekhi, are you drunk?”

“Nyet. Pay attention, ace. I’m leveling with you here.”

“Did Raf give you something to drink?”

“Sure. We had a coffee earlier.”

“Lekhi, you’re on drugs. Do you have a gun? Give it to me now.”

“Raf gave all the guns to the Suomi kids. They’re keeping the guns till the mercs sober up. Simple precaution.”

“Maybe you’re still jetlagged. It’s hard to sleep properly when the sun never sets. You should go lie down.”

“Look, ace, I’m not the kind of fucking wimp who doesn’t know when he’s on acid. Normal people’s rules just don’t apply to me, that’s all. I’m not a normal guy. I’m Leggy Starlitz, I’m a very, very strange guy. That’s why I tend to end up in situations like this.” Starlitz ran his hand over his sweating scalp. “Lemme put it this way. You remember that mafia chick you were banging, back in Azerbaijan?”

Khoklov took a moment to access the memory. “You mean the charming and lovely Tamara Akhmedovna?”

“That’s right. The wife of the Party Secretary. I leveled with Tamara in a situation like this. I told her straight-out that her little scene was coming apart. I couldn’t tell her why, but I just knew it. At the time, she didn’t believe me, either. Just like you’re not believing me now. You know where Tamara Akhmedovna is, right now? She’s selling used cars in Los Angeles.”

Khoklov had gone pale. “All right,” he said. He whipped the cellular from an inner pocket of his jacket. “Don’t tell me any more. I can see you have a bad feeling. Let me make some phone calls.”

“You want Tamara’s phone number?”

“No. Don’t go away. And don’t do anything crazy. All I ask is—just let me make a few contacts.” Khoklov began punching digits.

Starlitz walked by the sauna. Four slobbering, buck-naked drunks dashed out and staggered down the trail in front of him. Their pale sweating hides were covered with crumpled green birch leaves from Finnish sauna whisks.

They plunged into the chilly sea with ecstatic grunts of ambiguous pain.

Somewhere inside, the New World Order comrades were singing “Auld Lang Syne.” The Russians were having a hard time finding the beat.

Raf was enjoying a snooze in the curvilinear Aalto BarcaLounger when Khoklov and Starlitz woke him.

“We’ve been betrayed,” Khoklov announced.

“Oh?” said Raf. “Where? Who is the traitor?”

“Our superiors, unfortunately.”

Raf considered this, rubbing his eyelids. “Why do you say that?”

“They liked our idea very much,” Khoklov said. “So they stole it from us.”

“Intellectual piracy, man,” Starlitz said. “It’s a bad scene.”

“The Ålands deal is over,” Khoklov said. “The Organizatsiya’s Higher Circles have decided that we have too much initiative. They want much closer institutional control of such a wonderful idea. Our Finnish hacker kids have jumped ship and joined them. They re-routed all the Suns to Kaliningrad.”

“What is Kaliningrad?” Raf said.

“It’s this weird little leftover piece of Russia on the far side of all three independent Baltic nations,” Starlitz said helpfully. “They say they’re going to make Kaliningrad into a new Russian Hong Kong. The old Hong Kong is about to be metabolized by the Chinese, so the mafia figures it’s time for Russia to sprout one. They’ll make this little Kaliningrad outpost into a Baltic duty-free zone cum European micro-buffer state. And they’re paying our Finn hacker kids three times what we pay, plus air fare.”

“The World Bank is helping them with development loans,” Khoklov said. “The World Bank loves their Kaliningrad idea.”

“Plus the European Union, man. Euros love duty-free zones.”

“And the Finns, too,” Khoklov said. “That’s the very worst of it. The Finns have bought us out. Russia used to owe every Finn two hundred dollars. Now, Russia owes every Finn one hundred and ninety dollars. In return for a rotten little fifty million dollar write-off, my bosses sold us all to the Finns. They told the Finns about our plans, and they sold us just as if we were some lousy division of leftover tanks. The Finnish Special Weapons and Tactics team is flying over here right now to annihilate us.”

Raf’s round and meaty face grew dark with fury. “So you’ve betrayed us, Khoklov?”

“It’s my bosses who let us down,” Khoklov said sturdily. “Essentially, I’ve been purged. They have cut me out of the Organizatsiya. They liked the idea much more than they like me. So I’m expendable. I’m dead meat.”

Raf turned to Starlitz. “I’ll have to shoot Pulat Romanevich for this. You realize that, I hope.”

Starlitz raised his brows. “You got a gun, man?”

“Aino has the guns.” Raf hopped up from his lounger and left.

Khoklov and Starlitz hastily followed him. “You’re going to let him shoot me?” Khoklov said sidelong.

“Look man, the guy has kept up
his
end. He always delivered on time and within specs.”

They found Aino alone in the basement. She had her elk rifle.

“Where’s the arsenal?” Raf demanded.

“I had Matti and Jorma take all the weapons from this property. Your mercenaries are terrible beasts, Raf.”

“Of course they’re beasts,” Raf said. “That’s why they follow a Jackal. Lend me your rifle for a moment, my dear. I have to shoot this Russian.”

Aino slammed a thumb-sized cartridge into the breech and stood up. “This is my favorite rifle. I don’t give it to anyone.”

“Shoot him yourself, then,” Raf said, backing up half
a step with a deft little hop. “His mafia people have blown the Movement’s program. They’ve betrayed us to the Finnish oppressors.”

“Police are coming from the mainland,” Starlitz told her. “It’s over. Time to split, girl. Let’s get out of here.”

Aino ignored him. “I told you that Russians could never be trusted,” she said to Raf. Her face was pale, but composed. “What did American mercenaries have to do with Finland? We could have done this easily, if you were not so ambitious.”

“A man has to dream,” Raf said. “Everybody needs a big dream.”

Aino centered her rifle on Khoklov’s chest. “Should I shoot you?” she asked him, in halting Russian.

“I’m not a cop,” Khoklov offered hopefully.

Aino thought about it. The rifle did not waver. “What will you do, if I don’t shoot you?”

“I have no idea what I’ll do,” Khoklov said, surprised. “What do you plan to do, Raf?”

“Me?” said Raf. “Why, I could kill you with these hands alone.” He held out his plump, dimpled hands in karate position.

“Lot of good that’ll do you against a chopper full of angry Finnish SWAT team,” Starlitz said.

Raf squared his shoulders. “I’d love to take a final armed stand on this territory! Battle those Finnish oppressors to the death! However, unfortunately, I have no arsenal.”

“Run away, Raf,” Aino said.

“What’s that, my dear?” said Raf.

“Run, Raffi. Run for your life. I’ll stay here with your stupid hookers, and your drunken, naked, mercenary losers, and when the cops come, I’m going to shoot some of them.”

“That’s not a smart survival move,” Starlitz told her.

“Why should I run like you? Should I let my revolution collapse at the first push from the authorities, without even a token resistance? This is my sacred cause!”

“Look, you’re one little girl,” Starlitz said.

“So what? They’re going to catch all your stupid whores, the men and the women, in a drunken stupor. The cops will put them all in handcuffs, just like that. But not me. I’ll be fighting. I’ll be shooting. Maybe they’ll kill me. They’re supposed to be good, these SWAT cops. Maybe they’ll capture me alive. Then, I’ll just have to live inside a little stone house. All by myself. For a long, long time. But I’m not afraid of that! I have my cause. I was right! I’m not afraid.”

“You know,” said Khoklov brightly, “if we took that speed launch we could be on the Danish coast in three hours.”

Spray whipped their faces as the Ålands faded in the distance.

“I hope there aren’t too many passport checks in Denmark,” Khoklov said anxiously.

“Passports aren’t a problem,” Raf said. “Not for me. Or for my friends.”

“Where are you going?” Khoklov asked.

“Well,” said Raf, “perhaps the Ålands offshore bank scheme was a little before its time. I’m a visionary, you know. I was always twenty years ahead of my time—but nowadays maybe I’m only twenty minutes.” Raf sighed. “Such a wonderful girl, Aino! She reminded me so much of … well, there have been so many wonderful girls.… But I must sacrifice my habit of poetic dreaming! At this tragic juncture, we must regroup, we must be firmly realistic. Don’t you agree, Khoklov? We should go to the one locale in Europe that guarantees a profit.”

“The former Yugoslavia?” Khoklov said eagerly. “They say you can make a free phone call anywhere in the world from Belgrade. Using a currency that doesn’t even exist anymore!”

“Obvious potential there,” said Raf. “Of course, it
requires operators who can land on their feet. Men of action. Men on top of their profession.”

“Bosnia-Herzegovina,” Khoklov breathed, turning his reddened face to yet another tirelessly rising sun. “The new frontier! What do you think, Starlitz?”

“I think I’ll just hang out a while,” Starlitz said. He gripped his nose with thumb and forefinger. Suddenly, without another word, Starlitz tumbled backward from the boat into the dark Baltic water. In a few short moments he was lost from sight.

He woke in darkness to the steady racket of the rails. Vast unknowable landscapes, huge as the dreams of childhood, rumbled behind his shocked reflection in the carriage pane.

Jackie smoothed his rumpled hair, stretched stiffly, wiped at his mustache, tucked the railway blanket around his silk-pajamaed legs. Across the aisle, two of his crew slept uneasily, sprawled across their seats: Kumar the soundman, Jimmie Suraj his cinematographer. Suraj had an unlit cigarette tucked behind one ear, the thin gold chains at his neck bunched in an awkward tangle.

The crew’s leading lady, Lakshmi “Bubbles” Malini, came pale and swaying down the aisle, wrapped sari-like in a souvenir Scottish blanket. “Awake, Jackie?”

“Yaar, girl,” he said, “I suppose so.”

“So that woke you, okay?” she announced, gripping the seat. “That big bump just now. That bloody lurch, for Pete’s sake. It almost threw us from the track.”

“Sit down, Bubbles,” he apologized.

“ ‘Dozens die,’ okay?” she said, sitting. “ ‘Stars, director, crew perish in bloody English tragic rail accident.’ I can see it all in print in bloody
Stardust
already.”

Jackie patted her plump hand, found his kit bag, extracted a cigarette case, lit one. Bubbles stole a puff, handed it back. Bubbles was not a smoker. Bad for the voice, bad for a dancer’s wind. But after two months in Britain she was kipping smokes from everybody.

“We’re not dying in any bloody train,” Jackie told her, smiling. “We’re filmwallas, darling. We were born to be killed by taxmen.”

Jackie watched a battered railway terminal rattle past in a spectral glare of fog. A pair of tall English, wrapped to the eyes, sat on their luggage with looks of sphinxlike inscrutability. Jackie liked the look of them. Native extras. Good atmosphere.

Bubbles was restless. “Was this all a good idea, Jackie, you think?”

He shrugged. “Horrid old rail lines here, darling, but they take life damn slow now, the English.”

She shook her head. “This country, Jackie!”

“Well,” he said, smoothing his hair. “It’s bloody cheap here. Four films in the can for the price of one feature in Bombay.”

“I liked London,” Bubbles offered bravely. “Glasgow, too. Bloody cold but not so bad … but Bolton? Nobody films in bloody Bolton.”

“Business, darling,” he said. “Need to lower those production costs. The ratio of rupees to meter of filmstock exposed …”

“Jackie?”

He grunted.

“You’re bullshitting me, darling.”

He shook his head. “Yaar, girl, Jackie Amar never bounced a crew check yet. Get some sleep, darling. Got to look beautiful.”

Jackie did not title his own movies. He had given that up after his first fifty films. The studio in Bombay kept a whole office of hack writers to do titles, with Hindi rhyming
dictionaries at their elbows. Now Jackie kept track of his cinematic oeuvre by number and plot summary in a gold-edged fake-leather notebook with detachable pages.

Jackie Amar Production No. 127 had been his first in merrie old England. They’d shot No. 127 in a warehouse in Tooting Bec, with a few rented hours at the Tower of London. No. 127 was an adventure/crime/comedy about a pair of hapless expatriate twins (Raj Khanna, Ram Khanna) who cook up a scheme to steal back the Koh-i-noor Diamond from the Crown Jewels of England. The Khanna brothers had been drunk much of the time. Bubbles had done two dance numbers and complained bitterly about the brothers’ Scotch-tainted breath in the clinch scenes. Jackie had sent the twins packing back to Bombay.

No. 128 had been the first to star Jackie’s English ingenue discovery, Betty Chalmers. Betty had answered a classified ad asking for English girls 18 to 20, of mixed Indian descent, boasting certain specific bodily measurements. Betty played the exotic Brit-Asian mistress of a gallant Indian military-intelligence attaché (Bobby Denzongpa) who foils a plot by Japanese yakuza gangsters to blow up the Tower of London. (There had been a fair amount of leftover Tower footage from film No. 127.) Local actors, their English subtitled in Hindi, played the bumbling comics from Scotland Yard. Betty died beautifully in the last reel, struck by a poisoned ninja blowdart, just after the final dance number. Betty’s lines in halting phonetic Hindi had been overdubbed in the Bombay studio.

Events then necessitated leaving London, events taking the shape of a dapper and humorless Indian embassy official who had alarmingly specific questions for a certain Javed “Jackie” Amar concerning income-tax arrears for Rupees 6,435,000.

A change of venue to Scotland had considerably complicated the legal case against Jackie, but No. 129 had been born in the midst of chaos. Veteran soundman Wasant “Winnie” Kumar had been misplaced as the crew
scrambled from London, and the musical score of No. 129 had been done, at hours’ notice, by a friend of Betty’s from Manchester, a shabby, scarecrow-tall youngster named Smith. Smith, who owned a jury-rigged portable mixing station clamped together with duct tape, had produced a deathly pounding racket of synthesized tablas and digitally warped sitars.