Kzine Issue 15

  KZINE MAGAZINE

  Issue 15

  Edited by Graeme Hurry

  Kzine Issue 15 © May 2016 by Kimota Publishing

  cover © Dave Windett, 2016

  Grumbles © Francis Bass, 2016

  Five Miles Out of Port Huron © Jon Arthur Kitson, 2016

  Product © Richard Mark Glover, 2016

  More Certainty in Shopping © Brian M. Milton, 2016

  Wither © Joshua D. Moyes, 2016

  Dead Drop © Larisa Walk, 2016

  Lovely Girl © Kathleen Wolak, 2016

  The Lost Princess © Lynn Rushlau, 2016

  Note: An editorial decision has been taken to retain the spelling and vocabulary from the author’s country. This may reduce consistency but it is felt it helps to maintain authenticity and integrity of the story.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the copyright holder. For editorial content this is Graeme Hurry, for stories it is the individual author, for artwork it is the artist.

  CONTENTS

  DEAD DROP by Larisa Walk (11)

  FIVE MILES OUT OF PORT HURON by Jon Arthur Kitson (4)

  GRUMBLES by Francis Bass (12)

  THE LOST PRINCESS by Lynn Rushlau (8)

  LOVELY GIRL by Kathleen Wolak (17)

  PRODUCT by Richard Mark Glover (4)

  MORE CERTAINTY IN SHOPPING by Brian M. Milton (10)

  WITHER by Joshua D. Moyes (12)

  Contributor Notes

  The number in brackets indicates the approximate printed page length of the story.

  DEAD DROP

  by Larisa Walk

  I prayed to find something at the dead drop. No message would mean the man that trusted me was dead.

  In Gorky Park’s men’s room, I breathed through the mouth to avoid the smell of stale piss. A puddle on the scarred concrete floor lay between me and a chipped white sink. I skirted it, taking care not to brush my raincoat against the wall, painted in Soviet institutional blue. The bulb overhead sifted grayish-yellow light, concealing the shadowy corners.

  Leaning to tie my shoe, I scanned the toilet stalls: no feet underneath the doors. For the moment I was alone.

  I thrust my hand under the sink and groped behind the drainage pipe. My finger found a small hole in the wall. Further in, my nail bumped into a rounded object. I clawed it out.

  An image rose in my mind: a face with its left eye swollen shut, purple bruises on the cheeks and forehead, blood crusted under the nostrils. I dropped the thing from the dead drop. It plopped into the puddle on the floor with a splash: a wooden matryoshka doll, painted with typical loud reds, greens and yellows, with apple cheeks and a large round belly with a garish pink rose.

  I snatched it from the puddle. The image of the battered face came back. I recognized it this time: Vyacheslav Tikhomirov, the agent whose message I’d hoped to find at the dead drop.

  I shoved the soggy doll in my coat pocket and the image vanished. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. Hallucination or premonition? In the cracked mirror above the sink my wide eyes stared back at me from my chalky face.

  Outside, a men’s room attendant, an old woman in a blue babushka, nodded at me without a smile. I returned her grim greeting. If you didn’t want to look like a spy or even a foreigner in the Soviet Union, you learned to keep your smiles to yourself.

  I walked into the Park Kulturi Metro station past its yellow columns and boarded my train. No one’s gaze lingered on me. No one tried to block the train car’s exits. No tail? Maybe. After all, the KGB was on their home turf and could hide in plain sight better than me.

  The man in the seat next to me smelled like Belomorkanal cigarettes. He was reading today’s issue of Pravda newspaper, snapping the pages as he turned them. To distract myself from the memory of Tikhomirov’s bruised face, I read the Pravda headlines over the man’s arm: Brezhnev received another Hero of the Soviet Union medal, the people’s agriculture achieved the goals of its five-year plan before the deadline, a US spy was arrested. Damn it. Tikhomirov was probably dead, because I hadn’t gotten him out of the USSR.

  I should’ve gotten him out, I should’ve gotten him out, my brain repeated to the clattering rhythm of the train.

  “Komsomolskaya Station,” a recorded female voice announced.

  After the transfer to the Circle Line, I swept my gaze over my fellow passengers. No familiar faces. Perhaps I hadn’t been followed.

  In my office at the US Embassy I plucked the doll from my pocket, my hand protected with a rubber glove. Unlike larger matryoshkas that were hollow nesting dolls, this one was solid, about an inch tall. So, there wouldn’t be a message inside it. Then what, a KGB joke? I had to know.

  I took off the glove and rubbed the rose on the doll’s belly like Aladdin trying to summon a genie from an oil lamp. Tikhomirov’s face rose in my thoughts again. After a few seconds, it dissolved and another face replaced it: a Russian male, judging by the deep-set small eyes, thin lips and a thick-tipped nose. He had a pink mole on his chin. Fear pressed his mouth into a grim line.

  He spoke in broken English in my mind: I Nikita Kovalev. My fault KGB arrested your agents. Will betray more if you not get me out. KGB hurt me. KGB keep me in Nezhkovo village, south of Moscow, green house by woods. Three guards with me. Please, get me out.

  Had the KGB swabbed the doll with some hallucinogen? This made no sense. I couldn’t have hallucinated about such specific information, could I?

  In the bathroom down the hall I scrubbed my hands under hot water until they turned red. I put on a fresh rubber glove, picked up the matryoshka and hurried to the CIA station chief’s office.

  Ben Whetten, the station chief, listened to my report without interruptions. He sat behind his dust and fingerprint-free walnut desk in an office three times the size of mine. The air smelled like Cuban cigars. The torchiere lamp with a tipped green shade left his face in shadow, while its light made me squint. This was like being in an interrogation room. Whetten’s black suit and poker face heightened the impression. For all I knew, he was planning to ship me back to the States, to some government psychiatric institution.

  “What do you think, sir?” I asked him after the briefing.

  Whetten leaned back in his throne-like leather swivel chair. “Actually, Safford, we heard a rumor that the Soviets might have a mind reader. Maybe it’s more than a rumor.”

  I slapped his desk. “And you didn’t think it was important to tell me? Shit, I’m Tikhomirov’s case officer! If I knew this, I might’ve been able to keep him out of the KGB’s hands.”

  He pointedly eyed my fingerprints on the slick surface. If he expected me to polish his damned furniture, he had another thing coming.

  Whetten said, “It’s so nice that you can come into this office and feel free to throw a temper tantrum. This information is on the need-to-know basis. Plus, as far as I’m concerned, it’s still only a rumor. The KGB may’ve concocted the whole thing. Whoever heard of people being able to read minds, anyway?”

  I rose. “Yeah? And what if you sitting on this information cost six of our agents their lives? Ever thought about that, sir?”

  “You will not talk to me in that tone, Agent Safford. Else I’ll write you up for insubordination.” He remained seated with not a trace of anger on his mug, but then Whetten prided himself on never losing his cool.

  I
jammed my hands into my pockets. Arguing with him would get me nowhere. Might as well argue with a rock to convince it to move out of your way. I nodded at the matryoshka on the desk. “What are we gonna do about this?”

  “I guess I better touch it and see if I get the same message as you did.” Whetten reached for the matryoshka.

  “You aren’t afraid that the KGB might’ve put some hallucinogen on it?” I sat back down.

  “If it’s a hallucinogen, then my vision will be different from yours. There’s no hallucinogen that causes the same visions in everyone.” He shrugged and picked up the doll. He was a bureaucrat, but at least nobody could accuse him of being a coward.

  His head jerked back. A held breath exploded from his mouth. It smelled like spearmint gum and cigars. He set the doll back down on the desk. “A Russian guy with deep-set eyes, a thin mouth, and a pink mole on the chin. About forty-five, right?”

  “That’s him.”

  “And he told me the same things he told you, word for word. This couldn’t be just a hallucination, unless the Soviet science is centuries ahead of us.”

  “So, then he may be a mind reader for real.”

  “We could use someone like that working for us.”

  “Sir, this could also be a KGB setup to put a mole into the CIA. If he truly has this kind of ability, we’ll be like an open book to him.”

  Whetten steepled his fingers. “And if we leave this guy in the KGB’s hands, we might as well recall all of our agents from the Soviet Union, because he puts them in danger. That includes this CIA station.”

  “If this is a KGB plot to insert an agent into the CIA, it explains why I wasn’t arrested at the dead drop. But then if this mind reader guy is on the level, that could explain the same thing.”

  Whetten rose and walked to the nearest window, his polished shoes whispering against the plush green carpet. He raised the window shade and stared at the city below. His jaw muscles moved. “Never liked this town. It always looks gray, no matter the time of year.” He turned his back on Moscow. “Safford, you, Redding, Mulford and Logan meet me at 7 p.m. in my office. We have an extraction to plan.”

  * * *

  I held the final briefing before we left for Nezhkovo village. “Remember, no ID of any kind on you,” I told my team. “No talking while we disable the guards, and only Soviet guns with you. We don’t want anyone except Kovalev to know we are Americans.”

  We watched the house in Nezhkovo from the nearby birch and pine woods for a week. It was a one-storey dacha, a vacation home, with a peaked roof, blue wooden siding, and white trim. An apple orchard separated the house from the woods.

  People came and went in black Volgas and white vans that they parked in front of the dacha. Once a helicopter brought three dark-suited men with attaché cases. The vans brought food and supplies during the day and heavily guarded and gagged prisoners at night.

  We struck the following Sunday, an hour before dawn when sleep is hardest to resist. As usual, the night guard came out into the backyard, his cigarette an orange amber in the gloom under the apple trees. Having a smoke probably helped him stay awake.

  I lunged for him from behind a tree and slammed the butt of my gun into his temple. He crumpled to the ground with a soft thud. I stepped on his dropped cigarette, crushing the orange amber.

  Redding went to his knees, rolled up the guard’s shirt sleeve and administered a sedative. The syringe’s needle glinted in the moonlight.

  We tied the guard’s wrists and ankles and shoved rolled up socks in his mouth, then sealed his lips with tape. We dragged him behind the raspberry hedge at the northern edge of the orchard. One down and two more to go.

  I motioned to Logan and Mulford to go to the front of the house. John and I slipped through the back door, whose well-oiled hinges made only a sigh.

  The light in the kitchen was on. A glass of tea in a metal holder and a bowl of sugar cues sat on the dining table. White curtains framed the dark window. A whitewashed brick oven took up a sixth of the kitchen. The air smelled like cold ashes and fried mushrooms.

  Something creaked in the house, then again: footsteps on the floorboards?

  I signaled to John, and we crouched behind the brick oven.

  The creaking footfall came closer.

  Someone issued a loud yawn. “Kolya?” A squat man with sleep-matted curly brown hair padded into the kitchen. This had to be the second guard. He wore blue and white striped pajamas. “Must’ve gone out for a smoke,” he muttered. His bare feet slapped the wood floor as he walked up to the window, his broad back toward us.

  John sprang toward him, the butt of his gun aiming for the guard’s head. The guard turned, because he’d probably spotted John from the corner of his eye. The gun hit him in the left shoulder. He yelped and his fist folded for a roundhouse punch. His pale brown eyes narrowed into slits.

  John ducked, hit the windowsill and staggered into the guard. They fell on the floor and rolled, both grunting. The guard had his hands around John’s neck.

  I landed on the guard and got his neck in a lock. I squeezed. He made a choking sound. His bare feet drummed on the rug-covered floor. I increased the pressure, and he passed out.

  Gasping, John untangled from the guard’s grasp and used the windowsill to pull himself to his feet.

  signaled to him to give the unconscious guard a sedative.

  John rolled up the man’s sleeve and stuck a needle in his bulging vein.

  For a moment we stood over the guard, breathing like we’d just run a marathon through desert sand.

  “Fuck your mother! Who are you?” a male voice growled in Russian from the doorway. The third guard stood there, barefoot and wearing only gray sweatpants. Coarse brown hair covered his chest and stomach. He pointed his handgun at us.

  John dropped the syringe and reached for his pistol.

  “Don’t even think about it or I’ll blow a hole in you, like this.” The gun boomed.

  John’s head snapped back as the bullet hit him right above the nose bridge. He collapsed on top of the guard we had subdued and didn’t move. Blood oozed down his face.

  “John!” I yelled, as if calling his name would wake him from death. “John.” At that moment the resolution to stay silent didn’t matter, because my friend lay dead on the ground.

  “So, you’re Americans. CIA,” the guard said. “My superiors will want to question you. Take off your ski mask or I’ll shoot you in the knees!”

  “Fuck you,” I told him in English, and then repeated it in Russian, in case he didn’t get it.

  A gun with a sound suppressor coughed behind him. The guard collapsed, a bloody hole in his back. His head hit the floor at my feet with a crack.

  Mulford stood framed by the kitchen doorway, his gun pointed at the guard.

  Logan stepped around him. His gaze fell on John. He knelt, pressed his fingers to John’s neck, and shook his head. “Shit.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. “Damn it.”

  I gripped his shoulder. “That one got him.” I pointed at the guard Mulford had shot. “Let’s pick John up and put him in the back of the van. Can’t leave him here.”

  In the van we covered John’s body with a blanket and returned to the house. We found a locked bedroom in the back.

  “Kovalev?” I called out.

  “Here,” a muffled voice answered from the bedroom.

  “Stand aside. We’re going to blast out the lock.”

  “Yes.”

  I fired three rounds at the lock. My ears rang from the blasts in such close quarters, sound-suppressor or not. I kicked the door open.

  Kovalev came out from behind a walnut wardrobe that stood by the wall opposite his unmade bed. He looked exactly as he had in my matryoshka-induced vision.

  “Any more guards?” I said to him in Russian.

  “Usually not on Sundays,” Kovalev said. “But I think I heard a car outside.”

  “We took care of that,” Logan said.

  On the wa
y back to Moscow, Kovalev and I rode in the windowless part of our van, sharing the back seat, so that no one could see him. Logan drove, and Mulford rode shotgun.

  The van rattled over unpaved country roads, hitting potholes and furrows, splashing through mud. The noise kept the conversation between Logan and Mulford to a distant buzz. I doubted that they could hear Kovalev and me, either. The two of us spoke in Russian, because his English was poor.

  I said, “Last Sunday nobody from Moscow came to the dacha. We thought Sunday was your day off.”

  “Mostly,” Kovlev replied. “But some Sundays they take me to Gorky Park if I successfully betrayed an agent during the preceding week. Their way of telling me that I’ve been a good dog.”

  I gripped the edge of the vinyl seat and refrained from punching the bastard for being a stukach, an informer in Russian. “Ah? And what do they do in case you don’t betray anyone? Or did that ever happen?”

  He sighed. “You hate me.”

  “Are you reading my fucking mind?”

  “No. I can see hatred in your face. I don’t read anyone’s mind unless the KGB forces me to. That’s mind rape.”

  “Is that what you did to Tikhomirov? Mind-raped him to get the location of the dead drop in Gorky Park?” I scowled at him. Somewhere far away a train whistled. The van thumped twice, rolling over the railroad tracks.

  I expected Kovalev to come up with excuses, but he simply said yes and dropped his gaze.

  “Then why didn’t the KGB snatch me at the dead drop?” I said.

  Eyes downcast, Kovalev chewed his lower lip. “Because I didn’t tell them the location of the dead drop.”

  “Why?”

  “I needed a way to connect to you, so you could get me out of the Soviet Union.”

  “So the KGB can have you as a mole in the CIA?”

  Kovalev’s moist grey eyes blinked. “The KGB doesn’t trust me enough for that. I told you, I’m like a dog to them. When I’m good, they buy me pepper-spiced vodka and take me to Gorky Park. If they suspect me of concealing information…” His thin lips quivered.