Potboiler (21 page)

84.

None of the photographs Pfefferkorn had seen did justice to Lord High President Kliment Thithyich in the flesh. A photo failed to convey the way his hands made toys of everyday objects. It failed to capture the voice that came at Pfefferkorn like a gale wind. It did not account for his fondness for air quotes.

“The real problem with Communism has nothing to do with ‘civil rights,’ or the gulag, or breadlines. It’s got nothing to do with ‘history’ or ‘destiny’ or anything like that. It’s got nothing to do with Stalin, and it’s certainly got nothing to do with Dragomir Zhulk, who, politics aside, I thought quite highly of. We are ‘family,’ after all, not close but eleventh cousins or something like that. Spend enough time jousting with a bloke of his capabilities, and you’re bound to develop a measure of respect, if not for the content of his thoughts then for the way they’re phrased. Understand: I’m not saying I approve. The man was a bona fide ‘head case,’ and the methods they use over there are just too too much. You’ve never had to experience scrotal electroshock, but let me tell you, from what I’ve heard, it’s the very ‘definition’ of unlovely. So, yes, a raving sociopath he may have been, but there’s no denying he was good with the old rhetoric, and I admired him for it. Nor am I ashamed to admit that I’ve learned a few things about rallying the ‘people’ and whatnot from watching him work. So it’s not a ‘vendetta’ or anything like that. People have this image of me as ‘ruthless,’ ‘sadistic,’ ‘incapable of forgiving the tiniest slight,’ what have you
.
I’m not in a position to say whether there’s any merit to that. What I can tell you with perfect honesty is that my pet peeves have nothing to do with my reasoned opinion on the matter. I’m a rather ‘left-brained’ sort of fellow, you see, and I’ve given this a lot of thought. You might call it my ‘life’s work.’ In that sense, I suppose it is personal, insofar as I was born poor—and I’m not using that term the way Americans do, saying ‘poor’ when what you really mean is ‘not rich.’ You lot have no concept of what it is to go without the basics. Take an uneducated black from the Deep South in 1955 and drop him down with just the change in his pocket in the middle of the Gyeznyuiy and he’s going to be bathing in goat’s milk and wiping himself with silk. Here, being poor
means
something. My father toiled nineteen and a half hours a day in the fields. My mother’s hands were perpetually bloody from scrubbing dishes and poking herself with knitting needles. She did that habitually, stab herself. Not just knitting needles, anything within reach: diaper pins, rusty bolts, sharpened root vegetables. I never quite got what she was trying to ‘tell me,’ mutilating herself like that, but I’m fairly certain it had to do with not being able to afford to go to the movies. There I was, a ‘barefoot boy,’ asking myself: ‘Why? Why must it be this way?’ Years passed before I understood that the answer is in our ‘cultural DNA.’ It’s the same answer to my original question. What’s the real problem with Communism? And why are we as a people so susceptible to it? Two sides of the same coin. Want to guess? No? I’ll tell you why. Because the average Zlabian, like Dragomir, and like the Communist system in general, doesn’t know how to have any goddamned
fun
.”

The sumptuous wingback chair to which Pfefferkorn was cuffed had been specially modified for that purpose, with two thick iron hoops drilled into its arms, and ankle chains that prevented him from lifting his feet more than six inches off the ground. The lord high president was not thus constrained. His custom-made size-twenty-two goatskin boots landed on his George II desk with a mighty crash.

“That’s all people really want,” he said, shifting his seismic bulk and sipping from a generous pour of fifty-five-year-old single malt scotch. “To enjoy themselves. And why shouldn’t they? But that’s not the way the Zlabian thinks. It’s always ‘suffering this,’ ‘shame that.’ Or it was, once upon a time. I’ve done my damnedest to change that around here. It’s much more about psychology than economics. Take that TV show they love, the one with the crying poets. I’m proud to say that on our side of the boulevard, it wouldn’t fly. Now, we want winners.”

Savory, standing by the jukebox, nodded. The ten security guards did not move a muscle.

Thithyich fished an extra-long Marlboro out of the carton in his coat pocket. He pressed a button on his desk and an eight-foot jet of flame roared from the wall, narrowly missing his face and incinerating the cigarette by half. He dragged, blew, tapped a diamond-studded ashtray shaped like a roulette wheel. “We as a people have had it rough. No argument there. At some point, though, you have to take responsibility for yourself. That’s the beauty of a free market: it has no memory, neither for your successes nor for your failures. Merciless, but in a way also very forgiving. God, I’m peckish. Where are they?”

On cue, the door opened and fifteen bikini-clad women with global breasts bore in sterling-silver trays laden with food. They set them on the sideboard, kissed the president on the cheek, and left. Pfefferkorn could smell smoked fish and freshly made blini. One of the security guards loaded up a plate and placed it in Pfefferkorn’s lap. A second guard kept his rifle trained on Pfefferkorn while a third removed his gag and unlocked his hands. Thithyich watched him eat with a placid smile.

“Good, isn’t it? Better than ‘root vegetable this,’ ‘goat milk that.’”

“Thank you,” Pfefferkorn said. He didn’t see any sense in antagonizing the man.

“My pleasure. Drink?”

Pfefferkorn would have accepted even if Savory hadn’t told him to.

“This is the stuff,” Thithyich said, pouring. He held the tumbler out and a guard took it and held it under Pfefferkorn’s nose so Pfefferkorn could appreciate the aroma.

“Peaty,” the president said. “Yet smooth.”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“Cin cin,”
the president said.

Compared to
thruynichka
, the scotch went down like cream.

“Try the gravlax,” Thithyich said. “It’s house-cured.”

“Delicious,” Pfefferkorn said.

“I’m so glad. A little more, perhaps?”

Pfefferkorn handed the guard his empty plate. “Thank you,” he said, although he was feeling rather craven for taking seconds.

Thithyich stubbed out his cigarette. “And your trip? I hope it wasn’t too hard.”

Pfefferkorn shook his head.

“Lucian went easy on you, I hope.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Pfefferkorn saw Savory smiling at him in a threatening way.

“I feel like I’m on vacation,” Pfefferkorn said.

A guard handed Pfefferkorn a new plate. There was caviar and crème fraîche and capers and delicate matjes herring in a light tomato sauce.

“Well, good, good. It’s a matter of principle that you be comfortable and entertained.” Thithyich took out another cigarette and stuck it between his lips. “Everyone deserves a taste of what this world has to offer.” He summoned the jet of flame and sucked in smoke. “Not least those soon to depart it.”

85.

Pfefferkorn paused, an unchewed piece of herring in his mouth. He swallowed it down whole and wiped red sauce from his lips. “Beg pardon?”

Savory was grinning.

“You’re going to kill me?” Pfefferkorn said.

“You can’t honestly be surprised,” Thithyich said. “Not after all the inconvenience you’ve caused me. It was no simple matter, kidnapping Carlotta de Vallée, and for you to start running around, playing the ‘hero’—”

“Hold on,” Pfefferkorn said.

Everyone winced.

There was a long silence.

The president smiled.

“Please,” he said. “Go right ahead.”

“I—eh. Eh. I thought the May Twenty-sixers kidnapped Carlotta.”

“They did.”

“But you just said you kidnapped her.”

“Indeed.”

“I’m sorry,” Pfefferkorn said. “I don’t follow.”

“I am the May Twenty-sixers,” Thithyich said. “I created them out of whole cloth. Remember, I’m trying to provoke a war here. What better way to do that than to fan the flames of revanchism? The May Twenty-sixers’ raison d’être is to reunify greater Zlabia under true collectivist rule by any means necessary. It’s expressly stated in their manifesto, which I wrote in the bathtub. Lucian, the relevant part, please, from the preamble.”

Savory pressed keys on his smartphone and read aloud. “‘Our raison d’être
is to reunify greater Zlabia under true collectivist rule by any means necessary.’”

“What have you done with her?” Pfefferkorn asked.

“She’s being held at May Twenty-sixer headquarters in West Zlabia,” Thithyich said.

“
West
Zlabia.”

“Naturally. If I put the headquarters here, it would be rather obvious who was ‘pulling the strings,’ mm? I give my orders through an intermediary. Besides, nothing lends a fake West Zlabian counter-counter-revolutionary movement verisimilitude like having it staffed by genuine West Zlabian counter-counter-revolutionaries. Fabulously committed bunch, they are. Trained from birth to embrace fervent dedication to unattainable goals. God bless the Communist school system.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree, provoking a war,” Pfefferkorn said. “The U.S. won’t get involved.”

“Bosh. They’d much rather that than the alternative, which is that the West Zlabians give the gas up for pennies on the dollar to the Chinese.”

“It didn’t work the first time,” Pfefferkorn said.

“What first time?”

“When you faked your own assassination attempt.”

“That’s what your people told you.”

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“And you believed them.”

Pfefferkorn nodded again.

“Do you have any idea how much it hurts to get shot in the buttocks?”

“No,” Pfefferkorn admitted.

“If you did, you’d know that that’s utter claptrap. I never shot myself.”

“Then who did?”

“You did. Well, your government, really. They’re the ones who planted the book for you.”

Pfefferkorn was confused. “Which book.”

Thithyich looked at Savory.

“
Blood Eyes,”
Savory said.

“That’s the one,” Thithyich said. “Smashing title.”

“Thank you,” Savory said.

“That’s impossible,” Pfefferkorn said. “
Blood Eyes
had a dummy code.”

“My buttocks beg to differ,” Thithyich said.

“But they’re your allies.”

“My buttocks?”

“The U.S.”

“‘On paper,’ perhaps, but you know as well as I do how much that’s worth.”

“You just said they would support you in the event of an invasion.”

“Certainly.”

“Now you’re telling me they tried to kill you.”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t strike you as contradictory?”

Thithyich shrugged. “Politics.”

“I don’t know why I should believe you.”

“What reason do I have to lie?”

“What reason did
they
have to lie?”

“Plenty. They were indoctrinating you. It wouldn’t have done to admit that they engage in covert acts of cold-blooded political murder, now, would it? They much prefer that people think of them as the ‘good guys.’ In any event, Lucian intercepted the code shortly before it came off, and I was able to escape with minor injuries. But the whole experience set me thinking. You lot have been meddling with our affairs for nigh on forty years. High time for a taste of your own medicine, don’t you reckon? Hence . . . what’s it again?”

“Blood Night,”
Savory supplied.

“That’s the one,” Thithyich said. “Bang-on title.”

“Thank you,” Savory said.

“Let me get this straight,” Pfefferkorn said. “You got Savory to get me to get my publisher to get American secret operatives to kill Dragomir Zhulk.”

“Yes, yes, yes, and no.”

“No to which part.”

“The last bit. About killing Zhulk. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed.
Blood—
damn it, I’m at sixes and sevens, here.”

“Night,”
Savory said.

“Bang-on.
Blood
, et cetera, the second one—
that
contained a dummy code.”

Pfefferkorn stared. “A dummy code.”

“Well, we couldn’t possibly plant a real code. We don’t have the Workbench.”

“But why would you give me a dummy code?”

“To disrupt the pattern of transmission and create confusion.”

“Then who killed Zhulk?”

“Made to guess, I’d say it was your government as well. They’re not big fans of his.”

“But how? According to you,
Blood Night
was dummied.”

“My goodness, man, you’re not the only blockbuster novelist out there. The order to kill Dragomir could have been in any one of a dozen beach reads.”

Pfefferkorn massaged his temples.

“Take your time,” Thithyich said kindly. “It’s very complicated. More caviar?”

“No, thanks,” Pfefferkorn said. “Why did you have the May Twenty-sixers kidnap Carlotta?”

“Well, the idea was that getting ahold of the Workbench—or I should say, rather, a dummied version of the Workbench, because it should be obvious to anyone who gives it five seconds of thought that your government would never give them the
real
Workbench, although thankfully we can count on our friends across the border
not
to give it five seconds of thought—would give the May Twenty-sixer rank and file enough confidence to support a preemptive strike against me, and that’s all the excuse I need to steamroll them.”

“My understanding was that you could steamroll them right now,” Pfefferkorn said.

“True. But it’s better if they move first. Nobody likes a bully. And it’s nice to have the support of the international community. It’s very ‘in,’ geopolitically speaking. Anyway, so far, so good. I’ve had my intermediary suggest that a good time to invade would be right after their fifteen-hundredth anniversary festival. You know, swept along by a ‘tide’ of nationalist fervor and so forth. Fingers crossed, we should be able to get things into full swing by the first week of October.”

“I still don’t see why you have to kill me.”

“You didn’t let me finish what I was saying. One of the hallmarks of a successful businessman is his ability to assimilate new information and make creative use of adversity. Don’t feel bad about being caught. No way you could’ve anticipated it, because while I knew you were in town, of course, it never occurred to me to pick you up until Sunday. I made what you Americans call a ‘game-time decision.’” Thithyich stubbed out his cigarette. “Getting shot was uncomfortable enough, but the damage from a public-relations point of view has been much worse. In my universe, you see, the most valuable asset is respect. I can’t take what people say about me lightly. I can’t have people saying, ‘Thithyich is vulnerable, he’s gone soft. . . .’ It’s bad for business. What’s bad for my business is bad for the economy and therefore bad for the whole country. People know I’ve been shot. They know no one has been punished. It’s created all sorts of stickiness vis-à-vis my ‘ruthless’ image. Really, I’ve been terribly put out. I’ve gone so far as to hire a consulting firm, which ought to tell you a lot, because normally I hate that sort of thing. The groupthink makes my skin crawl. I have to say, though, I was impressed with the clarity of their findings, and while I’m sure you won’t be thrilled with their recommendations, they were unequivocal: the best way for me to revive my ‘bloodthirsty’ persona, or whatever, is to demonstrate that I’m just as capable of lashing out with indiscriminate violence as I ever was. They project a five-to-ten-point bump with a public execution. But here’s the interesting twist: executing a famous or prominent person gives an extra two to three points. I suppose it has to do with perceptions of power and so forth, i.e., ‘a famous person is powerful, therefore the person who kills the famous person is perforce more powerful.’”

“I’m not famous,” Pfefferkorn said. “I’m not prominent.”

“My dear sir, you most certainly are. At the moment, you’re the hottest writer around.”

“Nobody cares about writers,” Pfefferkorn said.

“Zlabians do,” Thithyich said. “Literature has been powering our ethnic strife for some four centuries. Ah—ah—please. No whining. I understand why you’d find these conclusions disagreeable, but data are data,
n’est-ce pas
? It’s nothing ‘personal.’ So, right. I do hope you can manage to enjoy yourself a bit today, because tomorrow you will be shot, publicly. Apologies for the short notice. Have a pleasant day.”