Page 26 of Gamma
Alexei is silent awhile, sipping and munching. When his fries are gone, he wipes his hands on a napkin. “American French fries are my favorite indulgence. I am on holiday, so I am allowed to eat them. Otherwise? This belly would be not so much flat, you know?” He swigs the last of his beer, muffles a belch, and then leans back in the booth, his eyes going to me. “Your man, this Apollo. Is not a good thing he has gotten into. Spaulding is bad, very bad. Not so bad as Cain, or his own grandfather, but still, it is a not so smart thing for us to underestimate Spaulding. He has much money, much influence. He does the selling of girls,da?Little ones, I have heard. To be eighteen is too old for his clients. I hear many things about him, and not one of it is a good thing. Also bad is he hires many of these goons, hmm? That is the right word, I think. The dumb soldiers who only shoot and beat up,da? This is the goon?” His eyes rove the bar, searching, scanning, assessing. “Anyway. I do have a few contacts who may know some things. But we must be careful of the asking questions. I hear some people go looking for this Spaulding piece of shit, and they are vanish soon after.”
“It’s true,” Duke rumbles. “We asked around in Lisbon and picked up a tail within a couple hours—and that tail had orders to make us quit asking questions, the hard way.”
“This could get very furry, very soon, if we ask the wrong question of the wrong people.”
Duke chortles. “Hairy, man. Things gethairy, not furry.”
Alexei snarls in disgust. “Stupid American sayings make no fuckink sense. How is a bad circumstance supposed to be hairy? What means, hmm? Stupid.”
Duke just laughs. “I dunno, man. I didn’t come up with it.” He reaches out and tugs on Alexei’s beard. “Been meaning to ask—what’s this about? Didn’t think you were the scruffy beard type.”
Alexei bats at Duke’s hand. “Wife is visit family in Minsk, one month. I have…a bad time was had in Minsk, and there are still some there who remember me and not so nicely, so I cannot visit wife’s family. So? I take holiday. Rome, Venice,da? I eat too much food and drink too much wine, and I do not shave only because wife say I look like this cave troll with no shaving. Always ‘you shave, you shave’ she says. Fuck shaving. But if I shave, she kisses me. So I shave. She is in Minsk one month, and so I do not shave.”
Duke nods. “Yeah, I know how that goes, man. But I gotta say, you look like shit with a beard.”
Alexei nods, laughs. “I know! I do not know what a cave troll is, but I look in the mirror and I see a man who should live in a box under a bridge, maybe. Is a matter of stubbornness, now. I wait until the wife is back from Minsk, and I let her see the ugly horrible beard, and then I shave it all off, for her.” He scratches at his jaw. “Is fuckink itchy.”
“How long you been married?” Duke asks.
“Oh, eight years? Nine, I think.”
Duke frowns. “And none of us were invited?”
Alexei’s expression darkens. “Was only her family. Sasha does not come.”
Duke hesitates—which is weird, because he never hesitates. “You mind me asking what happened there?”
Alexei growls wordlessly, then waves a hand. “You have brother?”
Duke shakes his head. “Nah. No family except Temple and her folks.”
“Is brother thing. Bad argument about stupid shit, and he is too stubborn to say sorry to me, and I am too stubborn also.”
“So you don’t talk to the rest of us for twenty fucking years?” Duke sounds genuinely hurt. “If I’d known you were gettin’ hitched, I’d have been there. I thought you’d know that.”
Alexei winces. “I am sorry, my old friend. In all truth, it was a bad argument. What about is something only for us. But it was bad. I take a job over here, in Berlin. Personal security chief for an important politics man, a friend of Harris.” He shrugs. “Is boring. Good money, easy. I meet Elsa—she is like Lear, the computers person, in the building where my employer does his work. She is so beautiful, with eyes like stars and smile to make the whole world more lighted up. She does not care that I am…cave troll, as she calls me. She just love me anyway.” He frowns, brow wrinkling, eyes distant. “I miss my brother. Nine years is stupid to not talk to brother, when for whole life he was my best friend.”
“I’m sorry you guys had that falling out,” I say, my first contribution to the conversation in a long time. “Can’t you just…one of you step up and end the whole thing?”
Alexei shrugs. “Maybe. I have pride, he has pride. We are in same room, maybe we fight with fists, beat each to bloody pieces. Then over, maybe. I don’t know.”
“Worth a shot.” I smile at him. “Right?”
He nods. “I will think on it.”
I glance at Duke. “Look, I’m glad we were able to have this reunion, but Apollo is still missing. And so is Yelena. And the longer we wait, the more likely it is something bad is going to happen. So…can we get to the part where we rescue him?”
Alexei grins at me. “I am boring old guy now, wearing suit, bodyguarding a rich politics man. But I am not totally a lost cause, okay? I know the situation before I come here, this Yelena girl, your Apollo, the grandson of our old enemy, Vitaly. My brother is the one who did the final killing of Vitaly—I don’t know if you know this or not.” He pulls a folded bar napkin from his pocket, on which is scribbled a set of geographical coordinates. “Already I have the place where Apollo was seen last. Is airfield in Tunis. He was sighted there, going from airplane to a deuce-and-half.”
“So we don’t need Rasmussen?” I ask, excitement ripping through me.
Duke holds up a finger. “No, we do. Unless your contact in Tunis knows where they went from there, we’re still short a clue as to where Apollo is being held. But at least we know he’s in Africa. Good work Alexei.”
“I am making a guess that Rasmussen will be going directly to Spaulding,” Alexei says. “So to track this ship will make us know this location. My contact is looking for more information, but I say to him to be careful, because he is no good to me if Spaulding kills him.”
Duke’s phone chimes, then. “Speak of the devil—it’s Lear.” He pauses, reading. “He has a tag on the ship—it docked in Algiers overnight and continued east the next morning. Whether Rasmussen was still on it isn’t certain. But he can stay out of sight on a boat, so I don’t know why he’d get off.” He muses. “So, Apollo was spotted in Tunis, Rasmussen—or the boat he was on, at least—in Algiers. But…why fly Apollo all the fucking way toTunisia?”
Alexei scratches his beard again. “Is many places to hide and not many questions to be asked. Perhaps Spaulding has somewhere out of sight there? Is many old buildings, forts and jails and this kind of thing. To buy one is easy, and you could hold a prisoner there forever and no one will know, or care.”