THIRTY-FIVE

Aslan came into the apartment first, edging sideways through the door. Hansen Linde followed. Though he wasn’t bearing down, he had a grip on Aslan’s trailing arm, an obviously custodial grip. A third man trailed behind. I didn’t get a good look at his face, but his vested suit, his crew-cut hair and the attaché case he carried virtually screamed Fed.

I was in Aslan’s bathroom, peering through the crack between the partly open door and the frame, and the first thing I noted was that neither Hansen, nor his companion, had drawn a weapon. This was a mistake for which Aslan would surely make them pay.

He didn’t wait long. They were barely five feet into the room when Aslan yanked his arm free and made a dive for the remote control on his desk. Hansen and the Fed both grabbed for their weapons, only to stop when they realized that the plastic object in Aslan’s hand wasn’t a gun.

Aslan’s lips were moving, but nothing was coming out. Maybe he was considering the effect on his own body, on flesh and bone, should he press that button. Finally, he swept the room with his arm. A wasted gesture. Hansen and the Fed had already figured it out. I knew that because I saw the Fed’s knees buckle momentarily, while Hansen withdrew his hand from beneath his jacket, then raised it, palm out.

‘We don’t wanna do anything stupid here,’ he said.

‘Why? You are fearing death?’

‘You betcha.’

‘This is good. Now please to put guns on floor.’

The Fed hastened to comply, removing a pair of weapons, the first from a holster, the second, presumably Aslan’s, from the waistband of his trousers. He put them on the floor and took a step back. Hansen didn’t move a muscle.

‘Are you not hearing me?’

‘I hear you,’ Hansen said, ‘but I’m not gonna surrender my weapon. That’s the first rule of policing, ya know. Never surrender your weapon. Plus, I just can’t take the chance that I’ll die in this room while you continue living. I don’t wanna go before the pearly gates with that crime on my conscience. Oh, yeah. I’d be too ashamed even to beg forgiveness.’

I fell in love with Hansen Linde at that moment. Not so the Fed.

‘What’s the matter with you, Linde?’ he demanded. ‘Are you crazy?’ When Hansen ignored both questions, he turned to Aslan. ‘Look, we didn’t come to arrest you, Aslan. I’m not even a cop. I work for Immigration. Here.’ Very slowly, he unbuttoned his suit jacket and removed a business card from his vest pocket. When he held it up, his hands were shaking so hard the print couldn’t have been read, even in sunlight, even if Aslan wasn’t standing fifteen feet away. ‘My name is Horn, Jack Horn. I work in the Deportations Division of the INS.’

Aslan smiled for the first time. ‘You are tired with Aslan in your country? You want no more to be seeing him?’ He paused, his eyes flicking to Hansen, then back again. ‘Where is it you want Aslan to be going?’

‘To Russia.’ Horn shifted his weight from one foot to another. Though I couldn’t see his face, I was certain that he was smiling, and that his smile was fawning. ‘Use your common sense, Aslan. It’s the only way. You can’t stay here, not with a murder hanging over your head. It’s time to move on.’

Aslan sat down in front of his desk, the light from the lamp bathing the side of his face and his shoulder. He seemed at peace as he crossed his legs and let his weight fall against the back of the chair.

‘Is not only way,’ he told the Fed. ‘Is another way I am holding this minute in my hand.’

‘Yeah, but . . .’

Aslan shook his head, bringing Agent Horn to an abrupt halt. ‘Where is partner?’ he asked Hansen Linde.

‘You mean Detective Corbin?’

‘Do not be fucking with Aslan. From his life you are ignorant. Dead is nothing to Aslan. Honor is all. Tell me where is partner.’

‘I don’t know.’

Aslan nodded. ‘Now, please to put down gun. No more bullshit.’

‘Do what he says,’ Horn demanded. His hands were curled into fists, his shoulders squared. For a moment I thought he was going to attack Linde, though Hansen was much larger.

‘What you said about honor?’ Hansen spoke directly to Aslan. ‘I agree with you one hundred percent. Honor is everything. That’s why I’m gonna tell you, for the last time, that either we all walk out of here, or nobody walks out.’

‘You think I will not do this?’

Hansen’s adam’s apple gave a quick bob as he shook his head. ‘I’m not giving up my weapon, Aslan. It’s your move.’

The Fed grabbed Hansen’s arm, only to be shoved away. ‘I have a wife and children,’ he pleaded. ‘I haven’t done anything to anybody.’ Then he hesitated for a moment, his breath coming in near-convulsive heaves, before he made his final argument. ‘I’m an innocent bystander. I don’t deserve this.’

‘Aslan doesn’t care about innocent bystanders,’ Hansen explained. ‘There’s enough explosive material in this room to collapse the building on anybody in the store downstairs. Maybe it’s Sunday night and the store’s closed, but we might easily have come along on a Saturday afternoon. To Aslan, it doesn’t matter.’

I watched Aslan’s mouth compress and his eyes narrow as he sought the courage to make good on his threat. He didn’t like having his bluff called – that much I knew from experience – but dying, apparently, didn’t have all that much appeal either. In any event, it was Hansen who broke the silence.

‘See,’ he said to Horn, ‘Aslan has the same problem I do. I don’t want to go to my death knowing that Aslan’s still breathing. Aslan doesn’t want to go to his death knowing that Harry Corbin’s still breathing.’

Aslan considered this for a moment, then rose to his feet, ‘Choice for Aslan is simple. Surrender and become prisoner of state, or go to Allah. Prisoner of state is not possible. In Russia, prisoner of state means Gulag. I have been to Gulag. Never again is what I have said to myself at this time. If once I am out of here, never again.’

‘Suppose we find someplace else?’ Horn asked. ‘Or you just walk away right now. I mean, if you left, there’s not much we could do about it.’

Aslan and Hansen both rejected the Fed’s suggestion with simple shakes of the head. ‘Here is better deal,’ Aslan declared. ‘I will make trade. Bring to me Detective Corbin and I will give to you back your lives.’

The offer was a transparent lie, but Hansen didn’t dispute it. Instead, he stroked his knobby chin for a moment, then said, ‘I could try him on his cell phone.’

‘No, do not try. For to go on with living, you must succeed.’

‘My cell phone’s in my coat pocket. My phone book too.’

Aslan grinned. ‘I am not afraid you will pull gun on me. That would be suicide.’

Hansen made a show of thumbing through his phone book, although he had to know that he didn’t have the number of the cell phone I was using. I’d purchased minutes in bulk, instead of buying into a phone company plan, and the number wasn’t listed in any registry. But that didn’t discourage Hansen. He punched away at the number pad, raised the phone to his ear, waited a few seconds, then said, ‘Show time, Harry. Get your ass inside.’

I straightened, stepped through the door and walked up to stand between Hansen and the Fed. Horn’s jaw was bobbing helplessly, his teeth clacking together, his eyes rolling in his head. Aslan Khalid wasn’t in much better shape. His eyes were saucer-wide, his irises a pair of black dots lost in a milky sea. As I approached, he riveted those eyes to mine. Linde immediately took advantage of Aslan’s fixation, his left hand snaking up to unbutton his jacket. Now he could get to the .357 he carried in a shoulder rig.

‘How’d ya know?’ I spoke directly to Hansen.

He rolled his eyes, his mouth curling into a little circle of distaste. ‘You left a goddamned swamp in the hallway downstairs.’

‘I was gonna clean up, only I didn’t get a chance. But what I’m asking is how you knew it was me who left the puddle?’

‘Well, I knew Aslan didn’t leave it, because we’ve been tailin’ him all afternoon.’

‘Fine,’ I insisted, ‘only that doesn’t explain how you knew it was me. Or how you knew I hadn’t come and gone.’

Hansen laughed. ‘Some things in this life you gotta take on faith, kiddo.’

Aslan rose from the chair, displaying the remote control as through it was a cannon. ‘Enough from this crap . . .’

‘Will you shut up,’ I said. ‘I’m speaking to my partner.’ I didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Who’d you break?’ I asked. ‘Nicolai Urnov?’

‘Yeah, Urnov. I put him in the hot seat and melted him like a stick of butter. He told me that Aslan owns a piece of a bar in Canarsie, so I gathered up Agent Horn, drove to Canarsie and there he was. It was only a matter of waiting for him to leave.’

Aslan was virtually incoherent by then, the hate in his eyes all-encompassing. I addressed Horn for the first time. ‘Take your weapon,’ I ordered, ‘and get the fuck out of here. And don’t call the cops.’

Horn looked from me to Aslan. I don’t know what message he took from Aslan’s contorted features, but he finally snatched up his gun and took off like a shot. I listened to his feet on the stairs, to the door slam behind him, then I raised my left hand to expose the AAA batteries in my palm. Aslan stared at my hand for a moment, then jabbed the ON button anyway. When nothing happened, he pressed it again, then again. Finally, his eyes darted to his left, to the DVD player still lying against the far wall.

‘Why,’ Aslan asked, his tone genuinely perplexed, ‘you have done this thing to me?’

I marveled at the question as I watched Hansen’s fingers move toward his weapon, thinking that the list of reasons, should I give them voice, would go on for hours. But the question was never meant to be answered. Instead, it was an attempt to divert our attention, and it might have been effective if Aslan hadn’t paused long enough to throw the remote in our direction before diving for the DVD player. Linde’s hand was on his .357 even as the remote sailed over his head. He got off his third shot before Aslan took his third step.

The muzzle flashes were predictably blinding in the darkened room, inducing a series of images that persisted in my retinas –

Aslan turning, Aslan rising suddenly on his toes, Aslan halfway to the floor, eyes open, lips parted, the back of his head a spray of red particles fanning out across the room.

I dwelt on these flashes, on the entire sequence and my part in it, until my wildly expanded pupils again contracted, until the roar of Hansen’s .357 gave way to the patter of rain on the windows. Hansen was kneeling beside Aslan. His fingers were pressed to Aslan’s throat, the gesture somehow ritualistic, as though he were blessing the body.

‘You realize,’ I said, ‘what would have happened if one of those bullets you fired off had ploughed into one of those bricks on the wall, right?’

‘What was I supposed to do, let him get to that DVD player, maybe turn it on?’

‘It wouldn’t have mattered, Hansen, because I cut the wires before you made your grand entrance.’

Linde rose to his feet and slid his revolver into the holster tucked beneath his arm. For a long moment, he regarded me with his hands on his hips. Then he grinned a grin that bore all the marks of his boyhood, towering blue skies, golden sunlight, fields of tasseled corn that ran all the way to heaven.

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘so one day Ole and his cousin, Sven, rent a boat and go fishing on Lake Chimmawabbee. They don’t have much luck at first, so they keep moving from one spot to another until finally, in the middle of the afternoon, they start catching fish. For the next half hour they’re pulling them in as fast as they can re-bait and cast off. Then they finally take a rest. “Sven,” Ole says as he lights his pipe, “we just better mark this spot so we can find it again.” After due consideration, Sven takes out a magic marker and draws a circle in the bottom of the boat. Ole stares at the circle for a moment, then shakes his head in disgust. “Ya big dummy,” he says, “how do ya know we’ll get the same boat tomorrow?”

This time, not even Hansen laughed.