Griffin
EIGHT HOURS EARLIER
The silence in Alexei’s apartment has weight. It’s expensive, bought with state-of-the-art soundproofing and the absence of normal life. And it’s driving me crazy.
I’ve spent the whole morning limping around this luxury mausoleum.
Every time I close my eyes, I see his baths, his skin scrubbed raw—I dream about this shit.
The image is so profane it erases the memory of the pain in my own arm.
And to think his suicide plan was partly to get rid of this, or that Cain just didn’t see his arrogance.
Seraphim showed a different side of himself to each of us.
I look at my metal hand, polished and perfect. The gift from the man I should hate. I look at the city outside, the monster of concrete and light. I’m trapped between two demons. And I don’t know which one scares me more.
Fuck this. I need air. Real air, not this filtered stuff that circulates in here.
I put on my old clothes, ignore the Audi key on the coffee table, and leave.
I take the service elevator, just out of habit.
Walking through the streets of the neighborhood above is like walking in a margarine commercial—everything is clean, quiet, fake—so I go in the opposite direction, limping, until I cross the invisible border and return to my world. Purgatory.
Here, the air smells of smoke, piss, and fried food. It’s my smell of home.
I stop in an alley, one of my old observation points, and light a cigarette.
I lean against the cold, damp brick wall, and I finally feel like I can breathe.
I stand there, just watching the flow of the street, letting the smoke fill my lungs and the truth of the conversation with Cain settle in my soul.
An old beggar, with a tattered coat and an empty look that has seen it all, approaches. He holds out a trembling, dirty hand.
“A cigarette, boy?”
I take the pack out of my pocket, take one out and put it in his hand. A ritual I’ve done a thousand times.
When his fingers close around the cigarette, he presses something small and hard into the palm of my hand. His eyes, once empty, meet mine for a fraction of a second.
“The guardian angel sent a message,” he whispers, his voice a scratchy throat. “There’s a dog that barks too much and attracts the hunter.”
And then he turns and walks away, blending back into the urban landscape, disappearing as quickly as he appeared.
I look at my hand. Along with my cigarette, there is a small, folded piece of paper. I open it. There is only one message written by hand, in a handwriting too beautiful to belong to anyone but him.
East Pier. 8pm.
— A friend.
Seraphim.
The message is strange. A dog that barks too much? What’s at the East Pier at 8 pm?
I throw my cigarette on the ground and crush it with my boot. The nausea and confusion I felt only intensify.
If he wanted to kill me, he wouldn’t have signed as a friend, would he? Seraphim isn’t that cynical... I hope.
Hope is a treacherous bitch, and I learned not to trust it a long time ago. But the alternative—ignoring the message—is even worse. Ignoring Seraphim is like ignoring the sound of a rattle in the dark. You don’t do it.
I turn and start walking back. East Pier. 8 pm. More than five hours to go. Is it a date? Or an execution?
The first thing I do is go to Alexei’s throne. The terminal, in the apartment.
If Seraphim wants me to go to the East Pier, I’m not going in blind. I look for maps, warehouse plans, property records, known affiliations. Part of the ocean of data Alexei gave me access to.
A dog that barks too much. What does that mean? Recklessness, noise. The properties on the East Pier are linked to lieutenants of another Malakov, according to the terminal.
Three appear. Two of them are active, busy docks. But the third is a cold storage warehouse, registered in the name of a front man who, according to Alexei’s files, died of “natural causes” six months ago. A ghost place. Perfect for a clandestine negotiation. Or an ambush.
I memorize the address.
Finally, the gun. The Glock Alexei gave me. I take it from where I hid it, check the cartridge. The cold metal is a strange comfort in my hand of flesh and bone. It’s been a long time since I’ve held a real gun. I put it in the waistband of my pants, in the back, covered by my coat.
I stop in front of the door, ready to leave. I look at the apartment. The silent luxury, the smell of nothing, the ghost life of the man who owns me. I’m leaving his palace, using his tools, to go to a meeting set by the man he wants me to find.
Fuck it.
I leave, closing the door behind me.
I arrive at the warehouse address twenty minutes before eight.
The place is exactly what Alexei’s terminal promised: a decrepit metal box, leaning against the side of a wide alley, with the letters of the name “S. Melnichenko” still visible on the facade—an illustrious dead man, according to the records, and an excellent alibi.
The windows are minimal and barred. There is no sign of movement.
The asphalt around the building has tire marks, but most of them look old.
The whole thing stinks of a trap, but it also gives me leeway: if it’s a trap, it’s for someone more important than me.
As night falls, I climb to the top of the pile of rusty containers on the opposite side of the street, moving as quietly as possible with my good leg and my bionic arm doing the pulling. The view from up there is perfect. For hours, there is only wind, the smell of salt and rust.
I spend the whole time reviewing the conversation with the beggar, the sweet taste of the smoke, the cold touch of the paper with Seraphim’s handwriting.
There’s a dog that barks too much and attracts the hunter.
Seraphim never speaks by chance. I try to imagine his brain, running through every possibility, every layer of lies. But it’s no use.
Fifteen minutes before eight o’clock, I finally see movement.
A black sedan enters slowly around the south corner, its headlights cutting through the pier’s fog.
The car stops in front of the warehouse, and a guy who looks more like a closet than a person gets out.
Dark suit, Italian shoes. He does a perimeter check, his steps short and precise.
He’s nervous, but not an amateur. His right hand never leaves his jacket pocket, probably in constant contact with a gun—standard guard dog.
For five minutes, he just walks, smokes, checks his watch, and his surroundings.
Five to eight, a second car appears. Old model, matte paint, nothing to draw attention—a normal person’s Ford Focus, but no normal person crosses that part of the pier at night on a Tuesday.
The driver is a thin man, almost invisible.
He turns off the car and waits before getting out, as if he wants to make sure no one is going to blow his head off the second he opens the door.
When he finally gets out, he moves with all possible caution.
I crawl over the containers, straining my hearing to catch more of the voices muffled by the wind. The negotiation is quick, no frills.
“Did you bring what I asked for?” The thin man’s voice is low, almost without an accent.
“It’s all here,” says the closet. He holds out a fat, brown envelope. “The transport routes, the security scheme for the docks, everything your boss wanted.”
The thin man takes the envelope, examines the edges, but doesn’t open it.
“The payment.” He says this in the way of someone who doesn’t argue about prices. The closet pulls out a black briefcase, one of those executive ones. They exchange without trust, but with haste.
The thin man opens the briefcase, examines the contents, and smiles the smile that only very fucked up people display when they smell clean money, or fresh blood.
“Next week,” he says, already turning his back. He doesn’t even wait for an answer. He disappears into the night with the old car swallowed by the silence of the pier.
The closet is left behind, motionless, as if he doesn’t know what to do with his own body now that he no longer has a mission ahead of him. He lights another cigarette, mutters something in Russian, and prepares to leave.
When he gets into the car, I act.
I jump from the top of the container. The jump is a stupid risk with a fucked up leg, but the adrenaline is a good anesthetic. I land on the roof of the sedan with a dull thud of metal contorting. The car alarm goes off, but from here, I doubt anyone will hear it.
The closet chokes on his cigarette, tries to pull his gun, but it’s too late.
I punch the driver’s window, and the glass shatters into a thousand pieces.
He tries to protect his face with his hands, and I bury my bionic hand in his lapel, pulling him out, but he presses himself against the seat, using my own momentum to unbalance me.
His hand comes up to attack. I lose half a second of traction—enough for his hand to emerge from the shadow with a shard of glass from the window frame and aim for my jugular.
I throw my metal arm in front. The glass scratches the polished metal, throwing off sparks and a sound of nails on a chalkboard that makes me lose focus.
This lapse costs me dearly. He pulls me halfway into the car, and the glass left in the window frame rips my shirt and embeds itself in my skin. The pain is instant.
The adrenaline erases the pain a second later. Pure fury takes its place.
I finally pull him out of the car, throwing all my weight back, and we both roll onto the sidewalk.
The first advantage is his: he manages to punch me in the chin so hard I feel my jaw dislocate.
It reverberates through my entire head. The taste of iron and saliva is instant, but also familiar.
I return the favor by breaking his nose with my forehead—the sound is delicious, the kind that makes me smile even on the ground, even though I’m the punching bag this time.