A shoulder separated, then cracked under the expertly wielded truncheon; another man had the side of his skull staved in. The third, turning to flee, was struck flush on his third sacral vertebra, which shattered on impact, breaking his back.
“What are you doing?” Maks said to the guard between attempts to regain control of his breathing. “I assumed these bastards bribed all the guards.”
“They did.” The guard grabbed Maks’s elbow. “This way,” he indicated with the glistening end of the truncheon.
Maks’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not the way back to the cells.”
“Do you want to get out of here or not?” the guard said.
Maks nodded his conditional assent, and the two men loped across the deserted yard. The guard kept his body pressed against the wall, and Maks followed suit. They moved at a deliberate pace, he saw, that kept them out of the beams of the roving spotlights. He would have wondered who this guard was, but there was no time. Besides, in the back of his mind he’d been expecting something like this. He knew his boss, the head of the Kazanskaya, wasn’t going to let him rot in Colony 13 for the rest of his life, if only because he was too valuable an asset to let rot. Who could possibly replace the great Borya Maks? Only one, perhaps: Leonid Arkadin. But Arkadin-whoever he was; no one Maks knew had ever met him or seen his face-wouldn’t work for Kazanskaya, or any of the families; he was a freelancer, the last of a dying breed. If he existed at all, which, frankly, Maks doubted. He’d grown up with stories of bogeymen with all manner of unbelievable powers-for some perverse reason Russians delighted in trying to scare their children. But the fact was, Maks never believed in bogeymen, was never scared. He had no reason to be scared of the specter of Leonid Arkadin, either.
By this time the guard had pulled open a door midway along the wall. They ducked in just as a searchlight beam crawled across the stones against which, moments before, they had been pressed.
After several turnings, he found himself in the corridor that led to the communal men’s shower, beyond which, he knew, was one of the two entries to the wing of the prison. How this guard meant to get them through the checkpoints was anyone’s guess, but Maks wasted no energy trying to second-guess him. Up to now he’d known just what to do and how to do it. Why should this be any different? The man was clearly a professional. He’d researched the prison thoroughly, he obviously had major juice behind him: first, to have gotten in here, second, to have the apparent run of the place. That was Maks’s boss all over.
As they moved down the corridor toward the opening to the showers, Maks said, “Who are you?”
“My name is unimportant,” the guard said. “Who sent me is not.”
Maks absorbed everything in the unnatural stillness of the prison night. The guard’s Russian was flawless, but to Maks’s practiced eye he didn’t look Russian, or Georgian, Chechen, Ukrainian, or Azerbaijani, for that matter. He was small by Maks’s standards, but then almost everyone was small by his standards. His body was toned, though, its responses finely honed. He possessed the preternatural stillness of properly harnessed energy. He made no move unless he needed to and then used only the amount of energy required, no more. Maks himself was like this, so it was easy for him to spot the subtle signs others would miss. The guard’s eyes were pale, his expression grim, almost detached, like a surgeon in the OR. His light hair thick on top, spiked in a style that would have been unfamiliar to Maks had he not been an aficionado of international magazines and foreign films. In fact, if Maks didn’t know better he’d say the guard was American. But that was impossible. Maks’s boss didn’t employ Americans; he co-opted them.
“So Maslov sent you,” Maks said. Dimitri Maslov was the head of Kazanskaya. “It’s about fucking time, let me tell you. Fifteen months in this place feels like fifteen years.”
At that moment, as they came abreast of the showers, the guard, without turning fully around, swung the truncheon into the side of Maks’s head. Maks, taken completely by surprise, staggered onto the bare concrete floor of the shower room, which reeked of mildew, disinfectant, and men lacking proper hygiene.
The guard came after him as nonchalantly as if he were out for the evening with a girl on his arm. He swung the truncheon almost lazily. He struck Maks on his left biceps, just hard enough to herd him backward toward the line of showerheads protruding from the moist rear wall. But Maks refused to be herded, by this guard or by anyone else. As the truncheon whistled down from the apex of its arc, he stepped forward, broke the trajectory of the blow with his tensed forearm. Now, inside the guard’s line of defense, he could go to work in the way that suited the situation best.
The homemade knife was in his left hand. He thrust it point-first. When the guard moved to block it, he slashed upward, ripping the edge of the blade against flesh. He’d aimed for the underside of the guard’s wrist, the nexus of veins that, if severed, would render the hand useless. The guard’s reflexes were as fast as his own, though, and instead the blade scored the arm of the leather jacket. But it did not penetrate the leather as it should have. Maks only had time to register that the jacket must be lined with Kevlar or some other impenetrable material before the callused edge of the guard’s hand struck the knife from his grip.
Another blow sent him reeling back. He tripped over one of the drain holes, his heel sinking into it, and the guard smashed the sole of his boot into the side of Maks’s knee. There was an awful sound, the grinding of bone against bone as Maks’s right leg collapsed.
As the guard closed in he said, “It wasn’t Dimitri Maslov who sent me. It was Pyotr Zilber.”
Maks struggled to extricate his heel, which he could no longer feel, from the drain hole. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
The guard grabbed his shirtfront. “You killed his brother, Aleksei. One shot to the back of the head. They found him facedown in the Moskva River.”
“It was business,” Maks said. “Just business.”
“Yes, well, this is personal,” the guard said as he drove his knee into Maks’s crotch.
Maks doubled over. When the guard bent to haul him upright, he slammed the top of his head against the point of the guard’s chin. Blood spurted from between the guard’s lips as his teeth cut into his tongue.
Maks used this advantage to drive his fist into the guard’s side just over his kidney. The guard’s eyes opened wide-the only indication that he felt pain-and he kicked Maks’s ruined knee. Maks went down and stayed down. Agony flowed in a river through him. As he struggled to compartmentalize it, the guard kicked again. He felt his ribs give way, his cheek kissed the stinking concrete floor. He lay dazed, unable to rise.
The guard squatted down beside him. Seeing the grimace the guard made gave Maks a measure of satisfaction, but that was all he was destined to receive in the way of solace.
“I have money,” Maks gasped weakly. “It’s buried in a safe place where no one will find it. If you get me out of here, I’ll lead you to it. You can have half. That’s over half a million American dollars.”
This only made the guard angry. He struck Maks hard on his ear, making sparks fly behind his eyes. His head rang with a pain that in anyone else would have been unendurable. “Do you think I’m like you? That I have no loyalty?” He spat into Maks’s face.
“Poor Maks, you made a grave error killing this boy. People like Pyotr Zilber never forget. And they have the means to move heaven and earth to get what they want.”
“All right,” Maks whispered, “you can have it all. More than a million dollars.”
“Pyotr Zilber wants you dead, Maks. I came here to tell you that. And to kill you.” His expression changed subtly. “But first.”