Stoitye. Aurelio’s muffled voice, and Darcy looked up as the general grunted, pistol-whipped his son against the driver’s door, and Aurelio lay there, one arm draped over the wheel, horribly still. Darcy’s instinct to run out into the darkness, out through the shadows of others, out of their cars, the Turk and the pastel-eyed henchman, men in black felt coats. The general half turned.
Look what you do, he said, a quaver in his voice. He try to save you. But he cannot even save himself. As the general opened the door to get out, the interior light sparked on Aurelio’s face and Darcy’s eyes filled with a sudden revulsion—the cuts in Aurelio’s cheeks like mutilations, not fresh from the pistol, but his mouth, scabby and black, sliced up his cheek on one side, sewn together by rough string stitches. Darcy understood why Aurelio hadn’t turned—too proud to be seen, a mouth so wounded he didn’t open it except to shout stop, to lunge at his father’s pistol arm. The general mumbled in Russian, an oath or a prayer, then closed the door.
Darcy sat inconsolably still in the blackness. Aurelio? he said, but Aurelio just hummed as if soothing himself, and Darcy began to rock as he’d done as a boy, side to side, holding his body together. Are you okay? he asked, but only heard humming. He closed his eyes tight, didn’t look at Aurelio, then he turned to the window, the sight of the general peeing in the snow, in front of his men, delivering instructions. Painting a yellow dog, Fin had called it, pissing in the snow, the same name as the flowers. He yearned to reach through the dark and touch Aurelio now, trace about his eyes, the scars, but instead he just rocked and stared at his friend’s silhouette, the snow as it kissed the window beside him, the murmuring of the KGB men outside, unaware. Then he heard the howl of a dog, far off, calling out through the snow, and the onslaught of something, grief, or a love that had lost its way, rested about the edges of Darcy’s eyes, as if on the lip of a dam, and then he was keening, swaying like a branch, and howling softly with the dog but the door was flung open and the general’s hand slapped him from it.
You listen to me, said the general, panicky, grabbing Darcy’s collar, ripping it against the burn as Darcy stuffed the document inside his coat. You will walk into these woods and show your friends this paper. You will see their faces, he said. Then he said something in Russian that stopped Aurelio’s hum. He reached into the front seat, ripped the fur hat from Aurelio’s head as if he were a mannequin, and Darcy saw that Aurelio’s head had been shaved.
Get out of this car, said the general, pushing the hat down over Darcy’s beanie. The sound of the dog, like a distant calf bawling, stayed in Darcy’s head as he fought being pitched like a leaf out into the night among men who stamped their feet, their breath fogging in front of them. Darcy felt strangely unbalanced, the snow wet against his face, indistinguishable from his tears. The Turk, hugging himself in the cold nearby, black eyes gleaming. The Opinel knife felt blunt as a stone as Darcy looked back at Aurelio, splayed against the car door.
The general patted the waterproof evidence bag stowed up under Darcy’s coat. They will see what you have, said the general. You give it back your friends if you want. It can burn with them. The general’s shrug was in his eyes. Just let them know we have it. And that we have you.
Darcy’s mind closed in on itself for protection, from the cold that already seeped into his veins, from these grim men warming themselves. He would be their mascot, but of sacrifice, and he felt the strangeness of life as death approaches. Aurelio’s gutted mouth plastered like membrane to Darcy’s blinking eyes, the stitches; the distant dog had gone silent, just Aurelio’s tune in Darcy’s head, a Cuban song maybe. The general poked his pistol in Darcy’s ear. Be a good boy blue, he said, shoving him forward in the wake of the powder-eyed driver.
What about Aurelio? asked Darcy, and the general ran a rough, wet-gloved finger from the corner of Darcy’s mouth up the side of Darcy’s cheek. It is a punishing, he said, we call it smiling. And a cry sank voiceless down inside Darcy. For being like you, he said, buffeting Darcy into the shapeless night.
Darcy picked his way through the black-haired pines as if walking through a bitter cold river, his coat turning to stone and death inviting as a face before him: come, it will be easier, come, like the face in the waves on Bushrangers Bay, the winter wants you to itself. He looked back but the Turk was right there behind him, nudging him on to follow the driver and his winking torchlight, KGB men swarming shadowy in their coats through the slender trunks. He looked back again just to see Aurelio, but caught instead the Turk’s beady eyes from under the brim of an astrakhan hat.
Give me the document, he whispered but Darcy hugged the plastic-covered evidence against himself, as if that was all he had, evidence of Trebizond, Thousands forced onto ships and dumped into the Black Sea, islands of innocent people. Darcy didn’t weep for them now, he was drowning himself. Give it to me, the Turk’s voice through the snow, I can help you. The driver glanced back, whispered fiercely in Russian, gesturing to a following guard to keep Darcy coming, Darcy uncertain who was in charge, the Turk was summarily motioned aside. The joint operation felt like a death march, Darcy sandwiched in the dark, on through crunching undergrowth. He didn’t believe there was help out here, no Armenian snipers swept down from these trees, no withered hand of God. The icy damp had already curled up in Darcy’s skin as he cradled the grim inevitability, his feet brittle as frozen coral. If lust was the cause of all sorrow, what had love done, what had it done for any of them? Herded out here to die, Aurelio an opuscheny. Fin weaving her way to some hut in these same woods, unsuspecting. Her departure up through that restaurant roof with not even a word of goodbye, just a telephone number in Darcy’s wet jacket pocket, her snowmobile lights switched out on the dark ice river. They’re the KGB… it’s not hide-and-seek.
Darcy pushed a wet coat sleeve over his face, his footing unsteady as they crossed the end of a white stone culvert, he almost collapsed, a new pistol held to his neck in the dark like a branding iron. Then, in a knot of black furs, the torch ahead turned into darkness and the driver crouched beside someone waiting in the shadows with binoculars. A clearing. A small wooden dacha not a hundred feet further, a figure through the branches in the lamplit shelter of the doorway, the new gun barrel pressed deep in Darcy’s ribs to silence him. With his bare eyes Darcy knew it was Jobik, alone in the cone of lamplight, wrapped in a blanket, his thick black hair pushed back from his beaky face, waiting. The Turk looked over at Darcy, his dark face wet and weathered, his glasses fogged. He removed them angrily, cleared the lenses with his fingers, his narrow eyes, antsy, and the general with them now, from out of nowhere, short-winded. The fear in Darcy that he’d be sent out into that no-man’s-land to pleasure the general’s imagination. Into that painterly stillness.
Jobik was drinking from a mug, the steam from it wafting in the funnel of light, just him beneath a hanging basket made from rope and the wet sound of the snow on the leaves, the soft hail hammering like winter storms climbing in off the Tasman Sea. Darcy’s mouth struck dry as a figure appeared up a path from the river. Fin, like a vision, delivered. The general’s bestial smile. We follow good, no? he whispered like a friend.