33 Gaultier

It had been a week of boredom and so much idiocy, being stuck inside the Sam's Town casino hotel at Tunica with Anatoliy Zub and his barbarians. All they did was watch television (country music videos and pornography), graze at the endless buffet, and gamble. Poker, blackjack, roulette. One day they forced Gaultier to drive out into a cotton field to watch them shoot AR15s into a rusting pickup truck. There were drugs and whores brought down from Memphis—of course there were, after all it was Anatoliy Zub—and late-night games of Texas Hold 'Em with Zub wearing sunglasses and his ten-gallon hat, a prostitute perched in his lap. Ivan the Terrible Comes to Dodge City. Gaultier was given an unlimited expense account at the hotel and frequently asked to join in Zub's little American vacation. Hamburgers, hand jobs, and champagne in the jacuzzi. Finally, now they were on the move and on their way for what they'd flown thousands of miles to recover. Gaultier had spoken to Tippi and Tippi had supplied a routing number for a bank in the Bahamas. Funds were transferred and a manifest with shipping container numbers faxed to Sam's Town. Gaultier had arranged every single step.

Now it was past midnight, a caravan of Anatoliy Zub's SUVs driving north along the Mississippi River past great oil containers and refineries belching fire and dark smoke.

"Peter Collinson," Zub said. "So slick and clever to try and cheat Anatoliy Zub. But you, my friend, helped me to fuck this man in the asshole. His prize will be locked up and back in Murmansk in a week. I will sell these weapons for twice as much as Collinson owed me. Debts will be squared. I might even spare his life."

"You will be disappointed, Anatoliy," he said. "Peter stole your money. But he took a lot more from the Taliban. I think this is something quite old and rare."

"Better than guns?" he said. "Better than missiles?"

"Yes, Anatoliy," Gaultier said, putting a fist to his yawn. So very late. "When they realized they'd been tricked, the Taliban sent three men to kill him in Paris."

"And?"

"Collinson killed them all," he said. "There was a lot of blood and flies in his flat. Such a fine flat, too. On the Haussmann."

"When I was a boy, I had no interest in Paris," Zub said. "I only wanted to come to America. I went to the cinema to watch cowboy movies every week. The faces of John Wayne and Gary Cooper so very big, the size of a Lana truck. John Wayne in the doorway in The Searchers. Amazing. Just amazing. But there was one film that meant very much to me. The Magnificent 7. Pure poetry, Gaultier."

"I know it."

"Yes, yes," he said. "But do you know it? The code of men. How to live and how to die. How to make your way with a gun. No home. No family."

"No enemies."

"Ha ha," Zub said. "None alive. Yes, yes. Robert Vaughn. Napoleon Solo. So I get my gold and go home. You will be compensated, of course. I knew you would help. Apologies for that little trick we pulled in Dubai. You must understand how it was necessary. Like ushering a goat into a cave."

Gaultier wasn't exactly thrilled about being compared to a goat. "And now you will fly me to Paris?"

"Not my plane," Zub said. "I have business elsewhere. But I fly you home. Okay? Business class. Not coach. I would not wish that on even you. Crying babies and fat Americans breaking wind."

"You are a prince, Anatoliy."

"Yes," Zub said, tilting the brim of his cowboy hat as they drove through a never-ending labyrinth of warehouses and shipping containers. "I am."

The driver of the SUV slowed at the gate to one such facility and said something to Zub in Russian. Zub admonished him and pointed to the gate. Zub punched up a number on his phone and the gates rolled back. Soon their SUV was deep inside the big maze of shipping containers, walls of red, blue, and green, battered and rusted from months at sea.

"This is it," Zub said. "Christmas morning as a boy. Wooden toys and Krasnaya Shapochka candy in my stocking. Maybe a knife from my father. He liked to present me and my brother with many knives. Did you know I killed my first man when I was eight? What a delight. A delight, I tell you. He'd come to rob my family while my father was away. Steal our television. I stuck the knife deep into his right eye and twisted it like a clockmaker."

Zub's SUVs lined up together, lighting the side of a battered yellow Conex.

Zub opened his door and walked out to join his men, who were smoking cigarettes around the back of the container. A nervous-looking American in dirty coveralls waited alongside with a bolt cutter. One of Zub's men stepped forward and handed the man an envelope that was surely stuffed with cash. The man peeked inside the envelope, licked his lips, and walked up to the lock. Zub stood back, hands on hips, his men muttering in Russian and blowing smoke up into the wind. Overhead there were big cranes for unloading Mississippi River barges and loading containers onto trucks or onto railcars. They had passed over railroad tracks just before coming into the gates of this place. Gaultier could not see the river but could smell it, metallic and cold.

The man in coveralls cut the lock and swung the doors open, headlights illuminating the empty, open space of the container. Zub walked inside and then began to yell Russian obscenities. Gaultier did not speak Russian, but he knew the words. Mu'dak. Blin. And also: fuck, asshole.

"Empty," Zub said. "Is empty."

Zub emerged from the container and threw his black cowboy hat to the ground. He looked at the man holding the bolt cutters and swore more to him in Russian. His face had turned a bright crimson, a slight sheen of sweat across his face and chest. Zub walked up to Gaultier and thumped him on the chest. "What is this?" he said. "You want to fuck me, too? Straight in asshole?"

"Maybe you made a mistake, Anatoliy."

Zub spoke Russian to one of the bears. The man they called Lukyan was just as bald and stubble-faced as the rest. Nearly indistinguishable. He closed one of the large doors and pointed to the numbers and then opened a sheet of paper in his hands. He shrugged and then pointed to the painted numbers, nodding.

Gaultier stepped back. Two of the men walked toward him. Gaultier lifted his hands as one of the bears knocked out his legs with the butt of an AR15. Gaultier tried to get to his feet as the bears kicked him to his back. Zub was over him now with a silver pistol, a very fanciful and vain gun with a pearl handle. He had flashed it to Gaultier many times after buying it from a gun shop in Tunica, saying it was exactly like John Wayne had carried in True Grit. Fill your hand. You son of a bitch.Ha ha.

"This," Gaultier said, "is not my fault."

Zub didn't answer. Gaultier believed he heard the slight clicking of the revolver. More Russian obscenities in his ear. The bears stepping back, surely thinking they were about to be sprayed with blood. He heard the crack of Zub's pistol, deafening in Gaultier's ears, his heart pumping fast, waiting for that minute when everything was over and then what? Who knew, but Gaultier tried desperately to recall a prayer from his childhood.

The American with the bolt cutters fell into a heap, blood spreading on the dusty ground. Lukyan walked over to him, kicked at his boots, and nodded to Zub.

Then the little American flopped onto his back, a pistol in hand, and shot Lukyan in the chest. The bear fell like a giant oak.

Every single Russian, including Zub, unloaded their clips into the American. The man's body danced off the asphalt like a marionette.

One of the bears reached under Lukyan's arms and began to drag him toward the river.

"No time," Zub said. "We must leave him. Get in truck."

Zub's English was even worse when he was agitated.

The Russians left Lukyan and the dead American and started the SUVs, circling out of the container facilities. No one spoke for a long time. The driver fiddled with the heater, hot air blowing through the front seats and back to where Gaultier had sweated through his finest shirt. Zub sat behind him, creasing the crown of his dirty black hat.

"I want Collinson's family," Zub said. "I take them. He will have no choice."

"May I speak freely, Anatoliy?"

"What is it?" he said. "What do you want?"

"You don't understand a man like Collinson," he said. "But I do. He obviously knew a lot more than we thought. But to take his family? To kidnap his children? That is very dramatic, but it won't work. A man like Peter Collinson will simply move on, change his name again, and start over. Whatever he has in this city is nothing more than a facade. You would be the star of your own Western movie, just fiddling with empty props."

"Props?"

"His children, his wife," Gaultier said. "They mean nothing to him."

"What do you suggest, Monsieur Gaultier?"

"You must dig his grave," Gaultier said. "And show it to him. Make him understand, like a Western, that this is the end of his line."

"Good," he said. "Yes. Very good. You bring him to us."

"If you want Collinson, I will need five of your best men."

"Why five?"

"Because in Paris," Gaultier said, shrugging, "three were not enough."

Zub placed the cowboy hat on his head, ejected two spent cartridges from his six-shooter, and tossed them from the moving car. "I will come, too," he said. "It will be like showdown."