The Fourth Courier Page 13

  “But it’s a letter.”

  “I can see it’s a letter. You can ask tomorrow at the post office.”

  “No, no,” Sergej protested. “Just give me enough stamps.”

  “How many you want? The price goes up every day.”

  “Five?” Sergej had no idea. He’d overlooked researching the price of postage.

  “Make it six if you want guaranteed delivery,” the man said. “Three thousand zlotys. There’s a mailbox by the escalator. Just there.”

  Sergej followed the man’s finger to a post box with a collection schedule that had disappeared under graffiti. He decided to trust the sturdy iron box and deposited his letter. When he turned back to face the crowded station, Sergej couldn’t remember where Jacek had told him to stay. He set down his suitcase to watch for his return. People streamed past him, stooped over with suitcases and worries, and to a person they failed to look up, which is where Dr. Ustinov was looking. He had glimpsed a bird, and he craned his neck to watch it flit about the skeletal ceiling.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  JACEK NAVIGATED THE UNDERGROUND MAZE of corridors choked with stale air. Only a few vendors remained open. From the end of one deserted tunnel, he heard Basia’s laughter and followed it to the halfopen door where rotating beer signs lit up Billy’s Bar. Basia sat on the middle stool of a threesome with smoke drizzling up her chin from a loosely held cigarette. She laughed at something said by the man seated next to her. He had slicked-back hair and a rumpled suit and watched Basia’s legs, not her face, calculating when he dared to press his knee to hers. Basia puckered her rust-colored lips and sent a smoke ring past him.

  Billy’s woman pushed a broom in Jacek’s direction without looking at him. Like Billy, she was a castoff: too ugly for the world, with circles as dark as bruises under her eyes. “She said she’s waiting for you,” the woman muttered.

  “What’s she been up to?” he asked.

  “She can tell you.”

  The stranger, emboldened by Basia’s laughter, dropped his hand to her knee.

  Jacek slipped up to the bar and sat next to her.

  “That’s a sweet story,” Basia said to the stranger, and pursed her lips as if ready to kiss him. She turned and kissed Jacek instead.

  He succumbed to her dishonest mouth.

  “Hey! I bought you that drink,” the stranger protested.

  Basia shot him a smile. “Thanks.”

  She got off the stool, careful not to let her fur touch the phlegmy floor, and followed Jacek into the passage. “Where’s the Russian?” Basia asked.

  Jacek turned on her angrily. “Our deal is, you stay clear of my business.”

  “I didn’t come here on police business,” she replied, “if that’s why you’re worried.”

  “Police business, that’d be something new for you. You’ve been buying shit here, haven’t you?”

  “When I don’t get it from you.”

  He grabbed her arm and pushed her up against a steel shutter; it reverberated in the empty corridor. “I don’t remember ever refusing you,” Jacek said, “not when you ask nicely.” Then he pressed his mouth hard to hers.

  When he let her go, she wiped her mouth of his and said, “Mladic wants me to handle the exchange tonight. Alone.”

  “The fuck you will.”

  “He knows this one. Where is he?”

  “By the magazines. He’s been talking about a bomb in his suitcase—an atomic bomb—and a million dollars. Something a lot bigger’s going on than he’s told you, and he hasn’t been paying us enough if it’s as big as what I’m thinking.”

  “Leave the thinking to me.”

  They came to the bottom of the escalator and Jacek held her back. “I think we should take this guy’s suitcase and see what Mladic is willing to pay for it.”

  “I’m not double-crossing Mladic. People who do end up eating their own guts. Now let’s find the Russian before he disappears.”

  Jacek followed her up the escalator.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  DR. USTINOV WATCHED BASIA SLOWLY emerge from underground on the halting escalator. Her fur coat hung open to reveal long legs sheathed by black stockings. She looked as glossy and sexy as if she’d stepped off the page of one of his girlie magazines. He recognized Jacek behind her, and realized they were together. Dravko had sent that black-clad angel of seduction for him! Sergej raised a hand and feebly waved.

  Her knees bobbed in the slit of her coat as she approached him. Jacek had disappeared; Sergei hadn’t noticed where. “Are you the mad Russian scientist I am here to meet?” she asked.

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Come with me.”

  She didn’t seem especially friendly, and Sergej asked, “Where’s General Mladic?”

  “That’s where we are going.”

  Outside the station, Basia dodged cars while drivers leered at her through windshields that distorted their hungry smiles. Sergej, hauling his suitcase, struggled to keep up. When they reached her car, Basia popped the trunk. “Put your suitcase in there.”

  He stumbled lifting it, and she reached to help, knocking it on the bumper. Sergej flinched, and nervously she asked, “How sensitive is this?”

  He pressed his wobbly teeth into an anxious grin. “There’s a trick to the latches.”

  She closed the trunk. “Get in.”

  Even unlit, the dashboard instruments appeared luminescent, and Dr. Ustinov touched them as if examining crystal formations. He’d designed satellites with less gadgetry. “Who are you?” he asked, impressed that she had such a car. “Dravko never mentioned you.”

  “I’m a present. Perhaps I should have worn a bow.”

  She pulled into the street and rolled down both their windows to blow out his putrescent breath. “Dravko said you would like me.”

  “Like you? Ha!” Sergej fantasized running his fingers up her stockinged thigh, or kissing her neck where shadows bled like bruises on her creamy skin. He was about to touch her when she asked:

  “Do you want to spend some time with me? Before we meet Dravko? I know a spot for us.”

  “A spot for us! Ha!”

  She made a sudden left turn and accelerated into traffic. Sergej was thrown back in the seat. Suddenly freedom was fun—he’d couldn’t recall ever being in a car so fast—and he laughed and slapped his knees. Soon she veered onto a cobbled ramp and cut her lights to follow the service road a short distance along the river’s embankment. The only houseboat along that stretch appeared abandoned, and the steady snow had kept away anyone else.

  Basia pulled to a stop. “Welcome to Lovers’ Lane,” she said.

  Lovers! Sergej couldn’t contain himself and lunged for her. “You’re so beautiful!”

  “Wait. The car’s too small.” Basia got out, flung aside her cigarette, and reached back for her purse. “I always carry something for protection.”

  She started for the river before Sergej could unwind himself from the seat and scramble after her. “I’m healthy,” he cried gleefully, “the clinic made sure of that!” He slipped on the steep part of the embankment, and when he’d picked himself up, Basia had stopped to turn to him and open her arms, spreading her fur coat like a welcoming cocoon.

  Sergej slipped his arms into her warmth.

  She said, “Don’t kiss me.”

  His legs trembled from excitement. With one hand anchored to her waist, he used the other to rummage at his fly.

  “I’ve got a little cap for that,” said Basia, and fumbled in her purse.

  “You’re right, we don’t need to start a family yet! I already have my three sons. They made the first deliveries.”

  “Dravko only told me about the last one.”

  “The lab technician,” Sergej remembered proudly, then cocked his head. “I never told Dravko about my sons. How did you—”

  Her bullet punctured his heart.

  He sagged against her, and in a moment so brief that he would have calculated it in nanoseconds, he kne
w the answer. “Ha!” he said.

  Basia stepped back to let him fall on the ground.

  From nearby, a man cleared his throat. She saw the burning end of his cigarette before she saw him. “What took you so long?” she asked.

  “I was probably here before you left the station. Where else were you going to take him?”

  Jacek rolled the dead physicist onto his back, popped open his switchblade, and slit his cheek, folding it back to reveal his teeth. “It’s a shame to leave so much gold behind,” he remarked. He wiped his knife clean on Sergej’s clothes and twisted off his wedding ring.

  Basia’s lighter flared in her face. “He tried to kiss me.” She shuddered at the thought and pulled hard on the tobacco.

  “What are you going to tell Mladic when this guy’s suitcase shows up but he doesn’t?”

  Basia inhaled deeply from the cigarette trembling in her fingers and tossed it away. “Let’s hold onto the suitcase. I’ll convince him to stay until I come up with a plan.”

  “Don’t blame his no-show on me. I don’t want to eat my own guts, either.”

  “I’m just holding him to his promises.”

  Jacek snorted. “What, is he reneging on the island? You got blood on your coat.”

  A car turned off the main road and started down the ramp. Bouncing on the cobblestones, its headlights strafed them. Jacek pulled Basia into an embrace and moved her over to block the driver’s view of the body. The car paused on the ramp. It was slick and too narrow to turn around, and the driver came all the way down to the embankment. Basia, still high, encouraged Jacek’s tongue, and their mouths pressed together so steadfastly that no one would dare interrupt them. The driver didn’t. He retreated up the ramp with his tires spinning.

  Basia had enough and pushed Jacek away.

  “We could be a good team,” he said. “You the ‘inside man’ except you’re a woman, and I got the van. It wouldn’t take too many deals to set ourselves up on an island.”

  “I’m finished with everything here.”

  “And you’re trusting Dravko?”

  “He wants what this one was bringing.”

  “Is it what this guy said it was?”

  “An atomic bomb,” she confirmed. “A small one.”

  “Fuck.”

  “That’s why Mladic is willing to pay so much.”

  “You have an atomic bomb in your car?”

  “It’s not going to go off just like that. Let’s get away from here.”

  They retraced their steps up the short embankment, their earlier footprints already blurred by the wet snow. When they reached her car, Jacek said, “There’s been another change in plans.” He reached into the driver’s door to pop her trunk. “I’m taking the suitcase.”

  “You don’t trust me?” Basia asked.

  “Why would I start tonight?”

  “Careful!” she warned when Jacek banged the suitcase lifting it out. “Don’t knock the latches.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  GENERAL MLADIC WASN’T A PUBLIC man. He enjoyed power but not the glitter of bars, women, and other temptations that his power awarded him. They made him anxious: he had to perform. However, establishing an alibi on the nights the couriers crossed was part of Dr. Ustinov’s careful plan, and there was no better place to be seen in Warsaw than the Marriott’s bar.

  “Another one?” asked the barman.

  Dravko slid his glass toward him. “Sure.”

  The barman—or barboy, really, he had such boyish features—poured two fingers of scotch, dropped one ice cube into it, and passed it back. “I’ve seen you in here before, haven’t I?”

  So the barman had remembered him.

  “I remember you, too,” Dravko said.

  “Who can forget your medals?”

  Dravko tried to see himself in the mirror behind the rows of liquor bottles. His chest of medals was no less colorful.

  “You must be a real hero,” the young man remarked.

  “Because of these?”

  “They look heavy to carry around.”

  “I’m used to them.”

  “So you’re in good shape, too. You look like you are. Don’t go away.”

  He stepped away to serve another customer.

  Dravko watched him until the TV diverted his attention. He recognized Sarajevo, and even if he didn’t understand all of the broadcaster’s English, the footage of people running to avoid a sniper’s bullet was message enough: the siege was underway, and he felt a swelling sense of pride.

  The barman came back. “How are you fixed with that drink?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “I could top it off.”

  “I have to be somewhere.”

  “Me too, and I wish it weren’t here. Are you staying at the hotel?”

  “No.”

  “Too bad. I get off in a couple of hours, and I bet each one of these babies”—the barman reached across the bar to touch his medals—“has a story to tell. Maybe I’ll see you later at the Arena, and you can tell me one or two.”

  “The Arena?”

  “Any cabbie knows the baths. I’m there most nights after work, unless I get lucky with a hotel guest. Too bad you’re not one. I’d like to keep you topped up all night.” The barman winked before he stepped away to serve other customers.

  Dravko sensed he was blushing. He had never been so blatantly propositioned, certainly not by a man. He found himself staring at him, and only glanced away when he realized he was becoming obvious. He looked at the television instead. The Sarajevo sniper story had been updated with footage of a woman throwing herself on an infant to protect it. When they didn’t show if the infant had been hit, Dravko, disappointed, knocked back his scotch and left the bar.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  BASIA STEPPED INTO HIS ROOM.

  Dravko shut the door behind her. His steamer suitcase sat by the door, ready to go.

  “You can put that away,” she said. “Your man didn’t show, so we’re not going to the shack.” Basia had traded her blood-splattered fur for a shiny black jacket. She stubbed out a cigarette and looked at Dravko as if he owed an explanation. “He never made it to the pick-up in Białystok. Jacek circled the station for two hours.”

  “He was supposed to leave after thirty minutes so not to draw attention to himself,” Dravko replied critically.

  “He thought he was doing you a favor.”

  “Where’s your fur coat?”

  “I spilled a drink on it. So I need another one. It appears that the scotch is already open.”

  “I’ll get it,” he said quickly, but she was already there.

  “What is this?” Basia held up a magazine with bare-chested men on its glossy cover.

  He snatched it from her and tossed it aside.

  “You are hiding it from me?”

  “It’s a diversion. Such magazines are not available at home.”

  Basia settled on the loveseat, reaching for the magazine. She flipped through the pictures of men engaged in various acts of primitive masculinity. “We thought we had not so many decadent desires as in the West, isn’t that so, Dravko? Is it liberating for you to know how common these things are? I imagine not. How unsettling it must be for you, to control so many things and yet be unable to control your own passions. What will you do when you have achieved your destiny? When you rule Serbia. Will you live with your demons—the world be damned!—or will you continue to fight them?”

  “They will have no place in Serbia,” he said flatly.

  “No queers and no Muslims. How certain you are of your perfect world. What happens, Dravko, if you don’t fit in the world of your own making?”

  He tossed back his scotch, and in the overhead mirror glimpsed Basia’s booted calves hanging off the loveseat. For many years she had been diversion enough. How quickly he had grown tired of his wife who, once married, thickened at the waist, grew stouter in the legs, and became too reminiscent of his mother to even contemplate carnal pleasure. He abandon
ed their bed without explanation, relegated his marriage to the rank of civic duty and sought pleasure elsewhere. Basia’s tricks exposed him to a troubling sensuality and freed him to conjure fantasies he could not even name, had he dared. They beckoned him with bodies resembling his own, and soon enough, he found himself searching the faces of men for evidence of shared desire. Would that he could vanquish his lust! Uproot it from his soul and cast it away! Dravko brooded over his shame. Even the tortured confessions he prodded from his victims failed to mollify his sense of unique sin.

  Basia held up the magazine to show him a boy. “You were once so handsome.”

  Indeed, Dravko recognized a semblance of his youth in the stocky, smooth-skinned lad with a pouting rosebud mouth. “Do you remember me like that?”

  “You remember you like that. How is it possible for a man to love himself and hate himself so equally?” she asked.

  “What exactly did Jacek say?”

  “Mystery Man Number Four didn’t show, that’s what he said. He’ll go back tomorrow.”

  “Sergej always said he’d only cross on a Monday.”

  Basia put the magazine next to her on the loveseat, open to the pouting lad. “Things don’t run on time in Russia. Apparently not even the days of the week. What do you want Jacek to do?”

  “Go back tomorrow, I suppose, on your theory that he’s only delayed.”

  “And if he doesn’t show tomorrow?”

  “He’ll cross next Monday.”

  Basia took hold of his belt and pulled him to her. “Perhaps I can convince you to stay a week, Dravko. We’ve been friends for too long to abandon each other. You will be king, Ulia your queen, and I will have my island. My villa. When you want, you will come for me, and we will all live happily ever after.”

  She drew him closer and fondled him through his trousers.

  She opened his buckle.

  Unzipped his pants.

  Pulled him out.

  He saw himself reflected in the mirrors and thickened.

  He watched her kiss him.

  She said: Your barman is beautiful.

  She said: It could be a fun week, Dravko.

  She said: Your war can wait a week.

  In the mirrors it was the boy’s rosebud lips that slipped over his cock.