“So,” Max sighed, “nothing changes, eh, Pietr? You don’t tell Avery everything?”
“Your friend was a mistake,” Volkov said impassively. “If he was important to you, I’m sorry.”
“What kind of mistake?”
“I don’t know-I didn’t even know his name until you mentioned it to Miriam.” He shrugged, a big theatrical shrug, a Russian shrug if I had any idea what that was. “Someone exceeded his authority. Someone decided he was a threat. Why? I don’t know. I am sorry, truly.”
“He was shot through the head and then they blew up his house, made it look like a gas explosion. The guys who did it were under suggestion. Don’t tell me this was some local apparatchik going off on his own.” His eyes narrowed. “You have some operation on the side, something Avery doesn’t know about.”
“Jim was in politics for sixteen years,” Volkov muttered. “He’s very comfortable with what he doesn’t know.”
Max leveled a finger at him. “It’s the old game-he’ll only be comfortable as long as you succeed, Petushka.”
Volkov drew himself up again, as though on rails. “How can we fail?” he asked. “Who do you think will stop us? If you tell people, straight-out, what we do, they’ll think you’re joking or deranged. They’ll laugh at you. Meanwhile, we’re backing candidates-who will win-in Kenya, Estonia, South Korea and France- this year. We already have elected friends in high places in twenty-two countries. Who will stand against us?” He leaned over the desk again, a plaintive note in his voice. “Max, all your life, you cling to ambivalence. Nothing makes you happy. Be what you are. Use what nature has given you.”
“Dave said the opposite,” Max responded. “He said just because we could, didn’t mean we should. He said we had too much power to give it to governments. Now you want to offer it to corporations!”
“Dave Monaghan was a cancer,” Volkov spat. “He’d have us all bank tellers, begging for scraps.”
“Ahh, you do remember him,” Max said and I could see something in him relax. “That makes this so much easier.”
I didn’t see Volkov touch any buttons or trip any wires but, all at once, the door opened, four very colorful-looking guards appeared and took positions around the table. There was a tall bullet-headed guy, a very skinny black man with very cool-looking dreads and tattoos and a kind of drowned-rat in a sweatshirt and rippling muscles. Marat followed them in but Volkov waved him off, annoyed. “We’re fine,” he said and the white-haired assassin turned, glowering and left.
“Max,” Volkov said, his voice deepening, “think about this. What is this wonderful life you have, out among the alligators, not using the skills you were bred for? Making nothing of yourself? Sincerely-I’m asking as an old friend who’s concerned for you.”
Max looked at him for a long time before answering. “That’s done, one way or the other,” he said finally. “I have nothing to go back to, whatever happens.”
Volkov beamed, though it only proved again that none of them knew how to smile. “So then, there’s no problem. Join us! We’ll be comrades again, doing great things.”
“They’re not great things, Pietr.”
“It’s a brilliant system.”
“Sure. You’re a great businessman. You plant bombs with one hand and sell bomb shelters with the other. What could be better?”
Volkov’s eyes were wary now. “Don’t mock me, Max,” he said. “We’re serious here.”
“I’m serious,” Max said.
“You admitted you have nothing to go back to.”
“I’ve spent too much time looking backwards,” Max nodded. “ But now I’ve finally found that positive use for my skills.”
Long pause, the two of them staring each other down, no one willing to be the next to speak. Finally, Volkov said, “And that would be?”
“What you just said: Standing against you- there’s something positive I can do.” Max was actually smiling, as relaxed as I’d ever seen him. “Probably better than anyone.”
“Stand against me here?” Volkov spat. “In my own building? With white noise generators and guards? You won’t get three feet.”
“We’ll see.”
“And how do you expect me to respond? Lock you up? Imprison you?”
“That won’t work-not for long.”
“Then what? Kill you?”
“Would you?”
“I could call Marat back-he’d do it without a single conscious thought. Don’t make me choose.” It was a plea and a threat at the same time.
“Alright-here’s another idea: let me go.”
Volkov coughed out a laugh, a deep laugh of real surprise. “I forget, sometimes, what a fantasist you are,” he said. “This is the real world, Max. You must join us. You know we can’t let you wander around now that we’ve had our talk.” He waited several long seconds for Max to reply. Max just stood, waiting-for what, I didn’t know. When it became clear he wouldn’t be offering any reply, all the emotion drained from Volkov’s face. “This will not end well,” he threatened.
“That’s correct,” Max agreed and looked me in the eye. And gulped. His eyes were wide on me and I knew right away that it wasn’t a casual move, that there was a message in it. He nodded- c’mon, you can get this — and gulped again. And somehow, I did-I got it. I gulped myself, gulped in a deep breath and held it. Max held out his fingers to Volkov; they crackled with electricity.
“No!” Volkov yelled to the guards. “Stop-”
That was as far as he got. Max snapped his sparking fingers, there was a flash of light and a loud crack in the room and all at once the others were gasping and gagging and staggering around like drunken sailors. The guards keeled over onto the floor almost immediately. The fire alarm was squawking, red lights flashing and sprinklers sprinkling. Volkov lunged for Max, but he gasped and slumped over halfway through the motion. Max reached out to catch him, searched his pockets for a moment and then dropped him flat on the floor. He stuck Volkov’s cardkey in the door lock and we ran into the hall.
“What the hell happened?” I demanded as the hall filled with drones and guards exiting in response to the flashing alarms and sprinklers.
“Oxygen burns,” Max said, “if you know how to ignite it.”
A burly guard rushed up the hall.
“Ozone!” Max yelled, pointing through the door window. “They keeled over! I saw them! You need a mask!”
“Shit! 10–45 in R36!” the guard shouted into his headset. “Bring masks! Gas masks!”
One second later, the overhead speakers began advising all personnel to evacuate in an orderly fashion, please; move directly to the exits and do not open any closed doorways. Not that it made anything more orderly-the hall was packed, the crowd pushing and shoving toward exits far down the end, more nervous and insistent by the second. Max pulled me out of the stream and down a narrow side corridor. “Tauber’s here,” he said, pointing.
“How do you know?” These rooms looked like storage closets, certainly nothing big enough for a man.
“Remember I came here? When they were chasing you around the hillside? You were jumping off the balcony and I was hovering over this place, all eyes and ears and no body.”
He stopped in front of the fourth closet and slipped Volkov’s keycard into the lock. Crammed inside was what was left of Mark Tauber once the pack of wolves had finished with him. His cheeks, arms and legs were bruised blue and full of cross-cuts, chunks of his hair seemed to be missing and his nose looked more crooked than I remembered.
“Feel like a ride in the country?” Max asked and Tauber started, as though expecting someone to hit him. One of his eyes was puffed closed-it was painful to look at. But he broke into a crooked smile as he realized who we were. Maybe one or two of his teeth were missing too, but they hadn’t been that great to begin with so it was hard to tell.
“I could use a little fresh air,” he croaked and we helped him to his feet and out into the flow of staff rushing out of the building.
When we burst into the afternoon air, Max led us around to the front parking lot, the executive section with the high-zoot machines. He pulled Volkov’s keycard from his pocket- a very fancy car key hung from the ring-and pushed the red button. A BMW nearby gave an answering chirp; we jumped in. “Pietr always liked nice cars,” Max said as we sped for the exit gate.