Bulgakov turned the screen back around, typed in something else, paused to read the information that appeared. “He was registered at the Gastinitsa Venera,” he said after a few seconds, “but failed to check out. When my detectives went there to investigate, they were told that his luggage was found in his room, which apparently he hadn’t visited for several days before his scheduled departure aboard the Gagarin. My men visited all the restaurants, shops, and bars, and although he’d been noticed in some of them, no one who worked in those places had seen him recently. And, of course, he failed to appear at the Cosmoflot departure gate to make his shuttle flight.”
“You told me this already, remember? In your e-mail.” This was a waste of time. Which was what he’d expected; local police were seldom much help in missing-person cases. Still, he always made a point of checking in with the cops. Professional courtesy, mainly, but there was always the chance that he might learn something he could use.
“So I did, and I imagine that you shared the information with gospodin Henry. And when he contacted the Russian consulate in Washington … he did this, yes?… he told them this as well.” Bulgakov leaned back in his chair. “Very well, let me tell you what I didn’t say in my e-mail, because the government back home doesn’t like to admit certain things and would be upset with me if I stated them in an official letter. On occasion … not often, but every once in a while … a young man like David Henry disappears while visiting Venus. Sometimes he wanders down the docks after he has been drinking all night, falls off a pier, and drowns, and his body is devoured by scavenger eels. That has happened. Sometimes he goes out on a boat tour with an unlicensed operator who’s actually a criminal, who robs him, murders him, and leaves his body to rot on an island. That’s happened, too. And sometimes … well, worse things happen.”
“Such as?”
Bulgakov hesitated. “You’ve heard of vityazka, haven’t you?”
“Yaz? Who hasn’t?”
“That’s the street name back home. Vityazka iz kornia is what it’s called here.” Bulgakov warmed to the subject. “It’s derived from the same slickbark trees that grow on some of the vine islands and from which the pharmaceutical industry has bioharvested korenmedicant, a clinical analgesic used in hospitals. But while koren comes from tree bark, vityazka comes from the roots. A narcotic as addictive as heroin …”
“And tastes just as bad when you smoke it,” Ronson finished. “Know all about yaz. It’s all over America and Europe.”
Bulgakov scowled. He clearly didn’t like being interrupted. “What you probably aren’t aware of is exactly how the smugglers are getting it. Their growers … yaz croppers, we call them … go out to islands where slickbark trees are found. On the islands the drug companies have already harvested, they recover the tree roots left behind and process them for yaz. But everything that goes into this … cutting, boiling, curing … is hard work, not something anyone willingly wants to do. So sometimes they’ll abduct some poor tourist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and force him into hard labor.”
“And you think that’s what happened to David Henry? He was shanghaied?”
“I’d say that’s a strong possibility.”
Ronson slowly let out his breath. His job had just become much more difficult. “If you’re right, then how do I find him? I understand those islands can drift quite a long distance …”
“There are thousands of them being carried by the ocean currents, and the croppers do a good job staying hidden. My people have always had trouble tracking them down. Locating the boy on one particular island will be difficult.” Bulgakov paused. “However, there may be a way. As you Americans say, it’s a long shot, but …”
“As we Americans say, I’m all ears.”
“Talk to a froghead.”
“A what?”
“Frogheads. The native aborigines. No one calls them Venusians … sounds like a bad movie. Anyway, they’re intelligent”—another smirk—“although I wouldn’t call them good company. And they see a lot of what goes on here.”
“I can’t even speak Russian. How am I supposed to talk to …?”
“I know someone who does. Mad Mikhail. You can find him down on the docks. Bring lots of rubles.” Bulgakov smiled. “And chocolate, too.”
“Chocolate?”
“You’ll see.”
Mad Mikhail hung out on the waterfront. Everyone who worked there knew who he was; all Ronson had to do was follow their pointing fingers to a small shack set up on the dock where the tour boats were moored.
Mad Mikhail made sushi from whatever he’d been brought by local fishermen, which he then sold to tourists. When Ronson found him, he was sitting on a stool inside his open-sided shack, cutting up something that looked like a cross between a squid and a lionfish and wrapping the filets around wads of sticky rice. He was a squat old man with a potbelly and fleshy arms and legs, his dense white beard nearly reaching his collarbone. His skin was wrinkled and rain-bleached, and he wore nothing but a frayed straw hat and baggy shorts; when he looked up at Ronson, it was with eyes both sharp and vaguely mystical.
“Sushi?” he asked, his rasping voice thickened by a Ukrainian accent. “Fresh today. Very good. Try some.”
Bulgakov had warned Ronson not to eat anything Mad Mikhail offered him; whatever he failed to sell today, he’d simply keep until tomorrow even if it had been spoiled by the heat and humidity. At least he spoke English. “No thanks. I’ve been told you can help me. I want to talk to a froghead.”
Mikhail’s eyes narrowed. “They are not frogheads. They are the Water Folk, the Masters of the World Ocean. You do not respect them, you do not talk to them.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know they …”
Mikhail slammed the long knife he’d been using down on the counter before him. “No one knows this! They call them frogheads, make jokes about them. Only I”—he jabbed a scarred thumb against his bare chest—“make friends with them when I came here over thirty years ago! Only Mikhail Kronow …!”
“You’ve been on Venus thirty years?” Ronson seized the chance to change the subject. “That means you would have belonged to one of the first expeditions.”
“Da.” He nodded vigorously, not smiling but at least no longer shouting. “Second expedition, 1978. Chief petty officer, Soviet Space Force.” A smile appeared within the white nest of whiskers. “The others went home, but I stayed. No one in Veneragrad been here longer …!”
“Then, Chief Petty Officer Kronow, you’re the person I need to see.” The best way to handle Mad Mikhail would be to appeal to his vanity. “I’d like to speak with the Water Folk … or rather, have you speak with them on my behalf since you know them so well.”
Mikhail’s gaze became suspicious. “About what? If it’s only a picture you want … pfft! Fifteen hundred rubles, they come up, you stand next to them, I take your picture. Take it home, put it on the wall. ‘See, there’s me with the frogheads.’ ” Disgusted, he spat over the side of the dock.
“I’m not a tourist, and I don’t want a picture.” Ronson reached into the pocket of his trousers—he’d have to buy shorts soon; his Earth clothes were beginning to stick to him—and produced the snapshot of David Henry his father had given him. Holding it beneath the shack’s awning so that the rain wouldn’t get it wet, he showed it to Mikhail. “I’m looking for this person. He came here almost a year ago, then disappeared. His family sent me here to find him.”