Episode 2 #7
Sevastyan got Anton out of his clothes. He’d been in them too long.
There was blood and dirt ground into the fibers.
Sevastyan bagged the ruins in a dustbin and tied the bag shut, then put it out in the hall.
All he had of his own belongings was his messenger bag.
But he had ways. He got Anton into the shower and sitting on the floor, and went back down to the front desk, using the hotel phone there to call a store he knew.
He rattled off sizes and colors and offered a hefty incentive to get items couriered over.
Then it was back upstairs again. He checked his own belongings and the clothes he was wearing for tracking and listening devices.
Nothing. They were in the clear: hotel of his own choosing that he’d never used before, all belongings stripped, removed, or searched.
He stopped in the middle of the room, looking around and racking his brain for anything else he should investigate. No. He’d checked everything.
He went back into the bathroom. Anton was where he had left him, still under the falling water.
He washed Anton’s back and checked some of the worst abrasions, cleaning deeper than Anton had managed himself.
Wrapping the older man in a towel, he got him back to a bed.
Both Anton’s wrists were scraped and bruised and there was a cut on his head that had reopened and started bleeding under the water.
Sores had developed here and there, probably from being transported while bound and unable to move away from abrasive contact with surrounding surfaces.
Wordlessly, Sevastyan treated each spot, using towels to give his father as much privacy as possible.
They were father and son, but he couldn’t help but see the differences between the two of them.
Anton had nondescript brown hair and a forgettable face that spoke of no distinct heritage.
His eyes were on the brown side of hazel.
“You can talk,” Sevastyan said. “Room’s clean.”
Anton didn’t respond for a long moment. “Was this what you were trying to warn me of?”
“This?” Sevastyan scoffed. “Not exactly. I knew MC7 was on its way out. I knew Mikhail was angry with you. I thought he would be the one to make a move. Raska was more interested in her secret project, which evidently was the Merchari.”
“So you didn’t know about the Merchari?”
“Not last time we met. I spent the summer in the Mediterranean being a poster boy and slipping rich playboys and girls drugs. Roll over. I need to check your front.”
Anton moved gingerly, bringing the towel round with him to cover his bits. “You’re a dealer?”
Sevastyan started to butterfly bandage a cut on Anton’s shoulder. “You’re only a dealer if you get paid. Evidently it was of national importance that this beautiful painting move from one residence to another. I made it happen. They haven’t even noticed the fake yet.”
Anton groaned. “The Merchari are the mob. Raska joined the mob.”
“As of now, so have you.”
“And you?”
Sevastyan put more distance between the two of them. “It’s all the same. MC7. Merchari.”
Anton’s face flushed. “One is in service of our country. The other is crime.”
“You signed up to serve Russia. I was born.” Sevastyan sighed. He sat down on the other bed and opened a bottle of water. “Drink. Take these.”
Anton sat up, rearranged the towel, then took the pills and the water. “What are they?”
“Antibiotics and vitamins. Just the over the counter ones. If you get a fever, you’ll need something more.”
“Forgot you could get them like that here.” Anton tossed the pills in his mouth and drank.
“Yeah. I tried to buy some in New York a few weeks ago. They told me I needed a script.” Sevastyan leaned back on his hands. “So, I guess you’re here now.”
Anton grimaced. “Think your mother will cough up my back pay?”
Sevastyan reached into his pocket and pulled out a bank card. He slapped it down on the side table between the two beds. “Until you get it.” He quoted a number equivalent to half a year’s salary at a decent job.
Anton looked between Sevastyan and the card. “You have that much?”
“I have my ways.”
“Do I want to know?”
Sevastyan grimaced and said nothing. Most of the money on that card had come from selling the clothes given to him by a certain bored and lonely mother of one of his British classmates.
The fact that she liked ripping his own clothes off him during their trysts had contributed to why she had bought him so many.
Anton picked up the card. “I can’t take all your money.”
“That’s one account. Out of many.”
Anton nodded. Then he dropped the card on the table again. “So, we’re just not going to talk about your mother putting a gun to your head?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“Has she done that before?”
Sevastyan studied his father. How did one explain that you just got accustomed to crazy? “No.”
“Why are you okay?”
Sevastyan stood and walked toward the window. He looked through the curtain and played with the fastenings. “I’m alive, aren’t I? Raska is Raska. You should worry about yourself.”
“I’m worried about you.”
Sevastyan adjusted the chair and started going through his bag. “I survive. I always do.”
“She should be stopped.”
“Then kill her.” Sevastyan looked up. “That’s the only way.”
Anton paused, then shook his head. “They should all go down. Her. Mikhail. This Merchari shit. That’s the only way we’ll be safe.”
“Who’s we?”
“You. Me. Collin and Alice. Anastasia.”
Sevastyan forced himself to stay relaxed, despite the mention of Anton’s American wife and children.
Anton drank more of the water. Sevastyan watched his father’s throat work, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down until he emptied the bottle.
There was a rift in the space between them.
Anton was somewhere else and Sevastyan was standing on the edge of the land, watching him drift further and further away.