today he did not have the jacket to cushion the shocks. Protecting his head, he fell flat as a rag. No rolling across, no somersault. No sense in ending up with a piece of railing in his back for the sake of a beautiful landing. Better to wipe the flagstones with his belly. Let the dear city become somewhat cleaner.
Lying on his stomach, the hdiver turned his head. The caterpillar wagged farewell and, after giving an electrical buzz, was hidden in the tunnel. The youth leaned on scraped palms and got up. He was standing in a preserved unfinished underground station without escalators and exits to the outside. Iron flakes of a large city were lying all around.
“Hey! I’m here!” he hailed hesitantly. “And we’re here!” the answer was quite near. The young person turned around, stretching his lips into a smile without any eagerness like stretching wet socks. A ray of someone’s flashlight struck him in the face. He tried to screen himself but he was not allowed to bring his hand to his face. In the next second, he was pinned in such a way that it seemed to him as if he was pressed in a vise. The light continued to hit him in the face. He more guessed than saw the three large figures.
Rough hands thoroughly felt his jacket pockets, underarms, and back, and slapped around the pant legs to his shin. After cutting the laces, they quickly and expertly unfastened the clms. They removed keys, cell phone, and a penknife, the existence of which even he himself hardly remembered, with a blade the length of a little finger. “It’s dull,” the young person said timidly. They advised him to keep his mouth shut.
One of those holding him was moustached, nervous, and rough. The other was round-faced, with thick eyebrows, and outwardly good-natured. Simply a shaven Grandfather Frost11 who had decided to take a break from the beard till winter.
“A schnepper? An attack marker?” asked Grandfather Frost.
“Yep, a hundred,” the youth answered carelessly and got the back of a hand on his lips. Strangely enough, precisely from Grandfather Frost. His face was compassionate at the same time, like a man who was forced to carry out his task.
“Of course he has nothing,” the one going through his pant legs answered.
“Good boy! Move!” The powerful figures closed in and half-led half-carried him somewhere. Stepping, the young person in the sweatshirt thought that if he tucked in his feet, no one would notice.
Unexpectedly the berserker walking behind issued a short exclamation and directed the ray of the flashlight near his feet. A heavy bee got out of the hdiver’s pant leg and crawled in a businesslike manner along the floor of the platform. The bee crawled and shone like a newly forged nail.
The berserker struck it with a heel. The bee was flattened under the heel but immediately straightened itself. The berserker struck it a second time, a third. In the end, he was already turning his heel screwing the obstinate insect into the concrete. When the bee should have become one moist pulp, he lifted his boot from the floor. The bee, alive and unharmed, was sitting and cleaning itself, moving its antennae and bending its wings with its legs. It displayed no hostility to the person who had jumped on it recently.
The berserker squatted down and started to singe the bee’s antennae with a cigarette lighter. “Tenacious trash! Look, jerks away!” he said triumphantly.
“Don’t touch it!” the youth in the sweatshirt rushed and again got the back of a hand. It hurt more this time because the hit came with the signet ring.
“Leave the insect alone!” moustached said, frowning. “You won’t do anything to it this way! It’ll perish by itself as mine once did.” The youth in the sweatshirt quickly looked at him and lowered his eyes. The bee took off and, after landing on his hood, trustingly crawled under the collar. He with melancholy felt how heavy it was, as if cast.
They started to come across lamps more often in the centre of the platform. The berserker who had trampled on the bee switched off his flashlight. A chair with the back to them was already very visible even without the light. Antique, with decadent curved legs. It would look much more appropriate in the out-of-town palace of a palm-tree dictator but not here in a deserted Moscow subway station. Guy was sitting in the chair, elbows on the back. His security did not form the usual chain but a spacious quadrangle.
Occasionally someone with a flashlight gave a sign into the depths of the station and he was answered in the same way, with the brief winking of a flashlight. Moreover, each time the flash was from a new place. “Eight teams of four here!” the youth in the sweatshirt estimated.
They led him to the chair. The cloth of the back was brighter than Guy’s face and the youth continually shifted his gaze involuntarily to it. Of Guy, he saw only sharp elbows and a soft face lowered a little. Guy waited.
“The bees became agitated. They’re swarming, flying everywhere. Sometimes you’re simply wrapped in a cloud – they’re everywhere,” the youth said indecisively.
“It means, already soon,” Guy commented indifferently.
“Within the next few days,” the youth began to nod in a hurry.
Guy, gnawing his fingers, listened to him. “If that’s all, you’ve wasted my time! The bees always fly for novices in September. It wasn’t worthwhile to drag me to Volokolamskaya for this.”
One of the guards, dark-complexioned with a fresh pink scar on the cheekbone, raised his arbalest. The berserkers holding the fellow in the sweatshirt moved aside. They did not want to be splattered.
The youth began to fret. “DON’T! I forgot! Four bees departed!”
Guy stopped the arbalesters with a look. “To whom? Managed to trace?” he asked quickly.
“Seems so to me,” the youth began.
“I need names, not hallucinations!” Guy cut him off.
The youth froze. To betray straight away was difficult. He wanted to do it piece by piece, choosing the least disloyal of them. But there was no turning back. After lingering, the youth squatted down, unlaced a boot, and took out from the top of the boot a folded sheet of notepaper.
“Pity it’s only four, but also good!” muttered Guy. “Where did you get this?”
“Kavaleria’s office. I copied while she searched for books on horse breeding,” the hdiver said dejectedly.
Guy narrowed his eyes. “But why didn’t you say so immediately? Ah yes! Always it, the unquelled inner voice!” The youth turned away.
“Now about something else. Did you do what I asked?” Guy asked insinuatingly.
“Sweatshirt” began to nod in a hurry. “I tried! At night with a crowbar I tore the roof off the beehive and tried to steal the queen bee. It was difficult because Gorshenya was stomping beside me. It tried to hamper me. It mumbled, muttered, pushed me away, shielded the beehive! I was risking my life!”
Guy yawned. “You were risking nothing. Gorshenya swallows only those it likes. It’s absolutely harmless to others! Did you do everything I ordered?”
“Yes. I fumigated the bees with that gunk you gave me so that they wouldn’t protect the queen. I almost puked!”
Guy frowned. “Now-now, young man! Choose your words more carefully! What gunk can there be in the hair of a witch buried alive exactly ninety-nine years and nine months ago? Well, possibly Beldo mixed it in too much hydrogen sulphide. But he wanted it better!”
“Please
Grandfather Frost is the Slavic equivalent of Santa Claus, bringing gifts to children at New Year's Eve parties and New Year celebrations.
