Authors: Michael Crow
"We did that. In another life."
"Da, da. So no history," Vassily says, eyes dampening again. I feel something close to affection for the man, despite what he was, and probably still is. But then what am I, if not the same? "No history. We drink, we eat, we celebrate new life, okay?
"But fuck God, it's so damn good to see my little brother," he says, waving over one of the waitresses, an aging lady with stiff hair the most unnatural shade of platinum I've seen.
"What'U it be, hon?" she says, smiling at Vassily. There's a little bit of bright red lipstick on one of her front teeth.
"Vodka, you beauty," Vassily roars in English.
"Vodka? You mean like just a straight glass of vodka, hon?"
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"I mean bottle, big bottle, very cold." Vassily beams at her.
She lowers her order pad, the little stub of pencil in her right hand bobbing up and down. Then she laughs. "A bottle, hon? Sure thing. You look like a man who can handle a bottle."
When it comes I have to explain to Vassily why I can only have a sip, not match him shot for shot. He looks dismayed. "This is some damn shame," he says, shaking his massive head. "So. I drink for you, my friend. In honor of you!"
He does. He also slurps down three of the four dozen Chincoteagues on the half shell I order. They taste of the clean salt sea. He cracks his way through two of the three dozen steamed crabs, bright red and crusty with Old Bay. He polishes off most of the whole baked rockfish, plus massive portions of cole slaw, potato salad and sliced tomatoes.
"Ah, this I love, Shooter," he says. "This sort of life. No more field rations! Never again! A peaceful life. Food, vodka, plenty of pussy. We earned all this, no?"
"We earned it all right," I say. We're sticking to Russian only. "But what the fuck are you doing here, my friend? How the hell did you ever wind up over here?"
"Ha! Who wouldn't come to best place there is?" Vassily grins. "A simple story. I only stay around that shitty place we were together maybe six months after you left. Then I go back to Moscow, no more military crap for me, and get into some business with friends. But Moscow, hey! It's like your Wild West. Completely crazy. Bribe this official, bribe that one, everything's supposed to be fixed. You relax, maybe even make the mistake of counting your money before it's in your hands. Then out of nowhere some punk kid pops up and tries to shoot you. Always misses. But still, this is insane. I get tired of this pretty fast, although I'm making lot of money. More than I could believe."
"So then?"
"So then, I get in touch with some friends in New York.
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They tell me there is good business to be done there. Easy business, because they've got rules there. Nc worries some stupid crazy kid will take a shot at you for no a reason you can think of. I sell off some of my Moscow enterprises. I get on a plane to New York with some capital. Very quickly I find my friends were not lying."
"But the word here is you're interested in horses, Vassily. Not that great a business, I can tell you."
"Just a sideline," he laughs. "I got lot of interests now. First, I got this big nightclub in Brighton Beach. Full of people every night, people with lots of cash. We got food, vodka, dancing girls, the works. The place is making me rich. Horses? That's more like a hobby. But what about you?"
"Not getting rich," I say. "I own some pieces of a few thoroughbreds, they do all right for me. Then I have a couple of sidelines—between you and me, not exactly legal, but pretty safe. I sleep sound. I get by."
"Ah, my friend," Vassily grins. "Maybe we should do a little business together sometime. What I really have first, and big hopes for, is some import-export. Import merchandise, export cash to Cayman Islands banks. That's the idea. So far, great! Maybe I need to help you get rich too."
"Or maybe I'll help you. I retail merchandise around here. How is your retail network?"
"In New York, almost perfect. Here, not too bad so far. This is pretty new market for us. Not even six months down here."
Shit, I think. He's the one.
"I like to start cautiously. Too small just yet for you, I guess. But if things go well, who knows?"
"I'll be here. I'm interested in building my business cautiously too. And peacefully."
"You think I want any problem when life is so sweet? So. You let me know if you hear of any good opportunities with horses. I let you know when I get something going we can
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do together. Any interest in pharmaceuticals? Could be big. Very big, I think."
"Seems we're thinking very much alike. My sense too that there are great growth possibilities," I say.
Vassily grins, cocks his head. We're both probing, and we both know it. We know this isn't the time or place to take it any further. So we slide into reminiscence, over coffee, about the old days, remember a few mutual friends who never made it out. Vassily kills the bottle of vodka with a toast to them. And he almost rips the check, grabbing it from me, pays in cash and leaves a $100 bill for a tip.
Outside, in the humid air of a Baltimore night, another kiss on the head and a rib-cracker of a hug before he slips into a big Mercedes that I figure must have been waiting outside the whole time. I glimpse a heavy in the back seat. The driver looks like a heavy too.
"Shooter, you I love. Let's do some things together soon. Okay, little brother?" Vassily calls. I wave. Then his window glides silently closed and the Merc pulls away.
Pharmaceuticals my ass, I'm thinking as I drive home. Vassily is our man. The one we have to take down. The magnitude of that task hits me hard.
"Love ya to pieces and all that, Luther, but no way I'm taking a felony fall with you," Annie says in the parking lot outside HQ Friday night. "You steal this off the street, or put a gun to a drug dealer's head and make a little offer—he gives you the car, and you let him slide by not planting a half-kilo bag of smack in there and then busting him for it?"
She's got her old leather Gladstone hanging from her shoulder, her head's cocked to one side, and she takes a long step back as I slip in the key, pop the TT's trunk, and reach for the bag to cram it in.
"Hey, the car's mine," I say. "Bought it a couple of days ago. The Camaro died."
"You
bought
this? This midlife crisis toy? You went into
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debt for this? Aren't you a little young for midlife crisis craziness?"
"Came on early and real sudden. Must be my high-pressure existence. Or an old soul." I grin at her. "What's that they say, 'Live fast, die young, and leave a good-lookin' corpse'?"
"You think I'm buying into that one, think again. I'm not planning on reaching my peak for at least another ten years, and then the decline's gonna be so gradual and graceful no-body'll even notice."
She's laughing when she hands me the Gladstone and then eases her slim self into the TT. When I climb in on the other side, I see her slyly stroking the black leather, checking out the cool instrument panel, sort of form-fitting herself into the seat. "Have to admit, it's a nice piece of work," she says, when I start the engine and she hears the very muted growl as I ease out of the lot and onto the road.
The past three days had yielded zero progress on the reservoir girl, so Annie kept her promise about the long weekend in Virginia, though I knew she'd have her cell clipped to her belt, or be otherwise within reach twenty-four hours a day. I slip into the heavy traffic on the Beltway toward Annapolis, then break free of it and head down the more lightly traveled Route 301 through Anne Arundel, Prince George's and Charles Counties. I punch the TT up very fast just once south of La Plata. "Oh, I'm digging this," Annie says, doing her version of a twenty-year-old college girl. "I adore speed."
So I ease off and we cruise just above the limits, cross the Potomac over the Governor Nice Memorial Bridge, and head southeast into the Tidewater country of Virginia. I like to make custom tapes, choosing favorite songs from bunches of CDs and putting them together in moods. Nothing sophisticated—a tape of opera arias with easy stuff like that wonderful duet from
Lakme;
a tape of ballad-rock by guys like Vic Chestnutt, Van Morrison, Mark Knopfler; my great chick tape: the Sineads, O'Conner and Lohan, some
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Sarah, early Bjork, acoustic Chrissie Hynde, Joan Osborne, that girl with the Bosendorfer, Tori Amos. We don't talk much until we're within thirty miles or so of Tyding's Landing, a little town on one of the creeks off the Rappahannock River, where Gunny and Momma have retired.
"So do I need a briefing before we get into the bear pit, Luther? Rules of engagement, preferred behavior, anything like that?" Annie asks.
"Just Annie being Annie, that's all. Get into it as much or as little as you like," I say. "Mom's gonna be great. It's been five years. Gunny? I don't know. He's gonna love you even though you're with me. Me? Well, like I told you, when I went overseas in '94, he said he was through with me for good."
"You maybe want to tell me exactly why that was? Or where the hell it was you went, maybe some hint about what you did?"
"Classified." I laugh, but I don't feel too humorous now. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you."
"Damn, Luther. That's two huge, lame cliches in one breath. Well above your usual quota."
I realize I'm more scared of losing Annie's good opinion than I am even of facing Gunny. How to tell her and not lose that, though? Straight and true, I conclude, after considering how easily she'd see through any bullshit story.
"I'm out of the army, working Virginia State Police, as you know," I start, not real sure if I'll make it all the way. "Guy comes around, 'Mr. Westley' he calls himself. Represents certain parties with an interest in the former Yugoslavia. CIA might as well have been tattoo'd on his forehead."
"He made you an offer?"
"Call it recruitment. This is '94, remember. The Serbs are practicing genocide in Bosnia... damn, you know how horrible that shit was. His principals are seeking trained special ops soldiers with combat experience to go to Sarajevo and maybe put some big hurt on the Serbs. Political angle I see
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right away—the Bosnian Muslims have already got Afghani mujahedeen helping 'em out. They're getting Saudi money for arms. Time for the West to weigh in. Nobody wants a radical Muslim state in the Balkans if Bosnia hangs on and survives."
"So you go mercenary? That it? That's what turned your father against you?"
"He hated what was happening there. He wanted the fucking First Marine Division, maybe with support from the 82nd Airborne, to go in and kick Serb ass. Refused to understand why that was never gonna happen."
"But he's got something against meres, even when they're doing what he wants regular U.S. troops to do?"
"Something like that. Soldierly code of honor thing."
"I'm going to be real interested to hear his views about that," Annie says. "Going to try real hard to follow the logic. If there is any."
I don't say anything, I'm just listening to the TT purring, feeling the car in perfect synchronicity with the road. Damn dark on this two-laner, maybe a gas station or a convenience store every five or six miles, otherwise hemmed in by forest and marsh.
"Care to say what you did in Sarajevo?" Annie asks.
Oh, Christ. Oh fuck. Guess I have to go all the way with it, now that I've gone as far as I have.
"Shot eighty-four Serb soldiers," I say softly. "Confirmed kills anyway. Could've been quite a few more. I was a sniper. It was my job. Then a Serb sniped me. In the head."
"Jesus," Annie hisses. I can't tell if she's revolted, appalled at me or just freaked by the whole story.
Presently I'm off the two-lane blacktop and the TT's crunching over a long, twisty driveway of crushed oyster shells. No stars, no moon, nothing ahead in the halogen high beams but loblolly pines, oaks and tulip poplar forest. Then there's a white clapboard house, lights on in a few windows upstairs and down, and the black sheen of water behind it giving
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back a wavery version of the place. When I stop the car and Annie and I get out, I can scarcely hear the front door open and Momma calling to me for the riot of tree frogs. Mom comes up and hugs me hard, nods repeatedly as I introduce Annie, greets her with air kisses near both cheeks, French style. Then we're into that house. "Your father," Momma says, "one full bottle of Jack Daniels he drink, waiting. You know what that means, Luther."
I do. Annie doesn't but stays cool. Momma leads us toward the kitchen, where I can see a dozen or more plates of Vietnamese delicacies she's spent all day preparing, no easy feat considering the necessary ingredients are rare commodities in the Tidewater.
I lag behind. I hear Gunny's voice rumbling and rolling out of the little room off the living room he calls an office, but that's more a personal museum, archive and library. It was in that room I received my banishment. Two of the walls are covered with photos, frame jammed to frame, from every stage and every tour of his thirty-year marine career. Homemade floor-to-ceiling pine bookshelves on the other two walls sag under the weight of nearly everything ever written that's worth reading on war, from Sun T'zu, Clause-witz and Moltke the Elder to the great modern military historian John Keegan's books, and even
A Bright Shining Lie.
The number of common foot soldiers like Gunny who're serious scholars of their trade would amaze most civilians.