Chapter 48: Dressing Up
The road west from Galich was rough, but Rudy felt deep relief. They were moving again, and movement was all he had to offer. They were away from the main highways where the police would concentrate any search. They were not out of the woods—though as that phrase crossed his mind, Rudy noted the thick stands of birches everywhere around the lake, and being in the literal woods made him feel comfortable and hidden. They still had to be careful and fast, but now by daylight, on a quiet country road, Rudy felt less rattled, more in control, better able to watch for ruts and bumps, see the turns coming, and keep Ksenia safe.
They reached the road Rudy had taken around the north side of the lake long ago. Rudy remembered pausing here to consider his route, but he didn’t remember many details of the route beyond, just forest and fields and tiny villages that Rudy, then as now, had too much else on his mind to notice.
An hour later, they stopped for gas in Buy, just before the town’s east river bridge. They traveled only another minute, across the River Vyoska into the town center, before Rudy pulled over again. “What?” Ksenia asked over the idling motor.
Rudy pointed across the street, past the bank and the open park and the sign for the cathedral and kindergarten. On a pink building with white trim, under an old sign for Furniture was a hand-lettered sign, black letters on a long white board mounted over the door: MOTO-CAMPING.
“You need boots that fit,” he said.
“But it’s 6 a.m.,” she said. “They won’t be—”
The door opened, and a man walked out with a fishing pole and a bucket. “Early bird gets the best bait,” Rudy said. He U-turned across the street and parked next to the pink building, behind a white Volkswagen. They pulled off their helmets and gazed for a moment into the low morning sun that had chased them all the way from Galich. Maybe they had ridden far enough north to escape the grey weather that had gripped Moscow all last week; maybe the weather pattern making all that rain had finally wrung itself out and broken or moved south. Whatever brought this weather, the sunshine was a balm to their tired eyes after a night of pavement rushing by, blurred and featureless under their single headlight. And above 10 Celsius in direct sun, after a week of rain and their wet, frigid dash across Moscow, felt like full summer.
They walked to the tall white double door of the shop. Rudy opened the door, and MOTO-CAMPING greeted them with smells of bait, fish, rubber waders, and honey on hot kasha. Shelves crowded narrow aisles and were stuffed with bags, tents, and other outdoor gear. Through a passage behind the counter, Rudy could see a row of knobby motorcycle tires and other technical gear. Straight back down the aisle with waders, he could see a shelf stuffed with boots.
While Ksenia went to the boot room—and boots and running shoes and sandals MOTO-CAMPING had, in surprising profusion—Rudy studied a map near the door (with regular glances out to the street). The store sat a short walk from the confluence of the Vyoksa and the Kostroma rivers. The Vyoksa carried water from Galich to this very spot, where the Kostroma continued back to the Volga. The river confluence formed the center of an apparent hotbed of fishing and camping and off-road riding. Small flagged pins on the map marked campgrounds and gas stations within a half-hour’s ride from here. The map also showed trails—red for motorcycles, black for hikers. He could spend a week riding and fishing here, sleep out in a different part of the woods each night, and not cover all of the trails. When he came back—
Rudy’s stream of thought stopped cold. Whenever he was on the road, he made mental notes of places he’d like to come back to and explore, restful detours he could take on the way to his next job. Such detours became impossible less than 12 hours ago. There would be no next job, no next trip. He would never see this place or any of the places he’d pinned on his mental map of Russia again. If he ever came back, he would be hunted and killed—and that was assuming he and Ksenia weren’t killed before they reached Petrozavodsk or the border.
A red-tracksuited goon shambled slack-jawed through the shop door. He smelled to Rudy of sausage stewed in vodka. He appeared to be transitioning from drunk to hung over, but Rudy got the vibe that this man was unpleasant in any state. A pistol jounced awkwardly in his Adidas-striped pants pocket. “Bitch threw my tackle box in the river,” the goon announced to the store. “I’m taking a new one.” He scowled past Rudy and disappeared down another aisle.
“Take one of the blue ones!” came a man’s voice from the back room. “They’re on clearance!” The man appeared, shiningly bald, shaking a spoon with one hand and carrying a bowl of steaming kasha in the other. Dressed for safari in khaki pants and shirt, the bald shop owner (the breakfast suggested residence; his voice signaled authority) took his post at the cash register, grouchily eying the fishing gear aisle. His brown eyes relaxed a little with his first spoonful of sticky kasha.
Rudy was still standing at the map, within whispering distance of the owner. Satisfied that Tracksuit had ventured far enough down the aisle, the owner leaned across the counter and whispered to Rudy, “Surprised his woman doesn’t throw him in the river.” Rudy kept his eyes on the map but grunted his agreement.
The shop man reached up to turn on a television mounted behind the cash register. A blonde newsreader spoke over scrolling updates. A background showing a rotating globe folded outward into a video update screen showing clips of emergency lights flashing on police vans and armored vehicles around crime scenes with wrecked cars, shattered windows, and white shrouded bodies on the ground. “…into open warfare in the capital,” the blonde narrated, “and three other cities overnight. State police report 33 arrests amidst intergang reprisals that have left 17 known dead, all members of major crime syndicates…”
“Black Crane and two, three other gangs,” the shop man said. He lowered his voice and nodded toward the fishing gear. “Too bad they can’t take some of our local hooligans with them.” Tracksuit reappeared, plucking a few lures from buckets on the end of the aisle and throwing them into a new black tackle box. Tracksuit’s bleary eyes regained some focus on the television and its images of emergency lights and bloody shootout victims.
“Ooah!” he drawled. “Kill off those Black Crane sons of bitches, make room for us in Moscow!”
“Fedya!” hissed the shop man. “Shut your mouth.”
Fedya glanced from the shop man to Rudy, who still kept his eyes on the map but listened closely, listening to the news for any mention of Irkutsk but also keeping on his radar where Fedya stood, where his arm, his fist, and his pocketed gun would be.
“You shut up!” Fedya barked at the shop owner. “Maybe time we zap this store, open new stores, in Moscow and Peter.”
Boot heels clopped sternly against the wooden floor. Rudy turned and saw Ksenia coming up the aisle in well-oiled black leather boots, low solid heels, uppers hidden under the legs of her baggy pants. She set a new helmet, black, like Rudy’s, same style, same tinted visor, on the counter next to the cash register. She noticed the gun in the goon’s pocket immediately. She caught Rudy’s eye to verify his awareness of the threat, then retreated to the clothing section.
Rudy watched Fedya leer all over Ksenia’s back. “Maybe time for a new woman, too,” the goon sneered. Then he lurched around and aimed his new tackle box into Rudy’s side. “Watch out on the highway, Uralnik” Fedya said, nodding out the window toward the motorcycle while breathing vodka fumes in Rudy’s face. “Mafia everywhere. We watch for good bikes… and good women.” Then Fedya slouched out the door, without paying, with his new fishing gear.
Rudy gritted his teeth. The Chechen’s pistol—Rudy’s pistol now, a gun he’d never fired and hoped like Ksenia he never would—and an extra clip were zipped snugly in his inside jacket pockets. The gun didn’t make him feel any safer. Fedya was big, he was armed… and he was walking away. No need for a fight here, Rudy thought.
Rudy stepped away from the map to look at the motorcycle accessories. He kept an ear on the back room, where MOTO-CAMPING’s other proprietor, a friendly woman, wide awake, used to the early morning hours of the fishermen and thrilled to have a female client, fussed noisily over Ksenia. In a few minutes the shop woman escorted Ksenia back to the counter. Ksenia wore new black jeans tucked into her boots and a black leather jacket. She’d found a dark silk scarf to tie around her hair. But Ksenia still wore the red bandana, now around her throat, tucked neatly under the collar of Saran’s gray sweater. She carried Volodya’s jacket and pants rolled together under one arm.
The shop woman carried a small, neat stack of new clothes folded beneath a light but rugged rain suit—”Sun today, but rain from Finland tomorrow,” the shop woman vowed, setting the new clothes down by the helmet Ksenia had chosen. “Now you won’t have to wear your husband’s shabby mechanic’s clothes.”
Rudy joined them at the cashier’s table. “Here,” he said, “add these.” Atop the clothes he laid a pair of helmet radios, then added a box of energy bars (with lingonberry, of all things, something Rudy had never tried) and a couple bottles of water from the camp chow next to the counter.
The shop man clinked his spoon into his empty bowl and started punching up their total on a calculator. His wife turned down the television and corrected his math, giving Ksenia a discount on the jacket and helmet “for having such a sense of style”. Ksenia paid cash and carried the clothes, borrowed and new, out of the shop; Rudy followed with the rest of their purchases.
At the curb, Ksenia asked Rudy to stand close. As he shielded her, Ksenia carefully transferred her pistol and clips from Volodya’s jacket pockets to her own. “I won’t need your friend’s clothes any longer,” she said, zipping her new jacket. “If you don’t…”
“They don’t fit me, either,” Rudy said. “Volodya was…” Rudy’s voice caught, as he thought of Volodya and Saran back in Moscow, always taking care of each other, and taking care of Rudy, even if Volodya prickled at Rudy’s closeness to Saran. “He was a big man.”
Ksenia nodded. Trying not to dwell, Rudy handed her energy bars and one of the bottles. “No time for kasha,” he said. “I’ll stow your clothes.” As Ksenia opened the box and unwrapped breakfast, Rudy took the new clothes from her hands—wool socks, briefs, a thermal top, all black, with the rain pants, dark green with silver reflective cuffs—and tucked them into the saddlebag. He’d left his camping gear in Moscow, and he didn’t have much else: his tools, Ken’s journals, and—
“Oh!” Rudy exclaimed.
Ksenia was halfway through one of the dense brown snacks. “What’s wrong?”
He dug into a pocket in the back of the saddlebag. “Nothing. I just remembered….” He pulled out Ksenia’s old blue scarf. Like the red bandana, it was faded and a little frayed. Like Ken’s journals, Rudy kept it with the bike. He gave Ksenia a shy look, then tied the scarf around his neck. “For luck.”
Ksenia stared for a moment, then blinked back tears. On impulse, Rudy took her hand. “Yes,” she said with a sniffle. “Double luck. This luck—” she touched her throat “—found us MOTO-CAMPING. Double luck—” she laid her fingers gently on Rudy’s collar, on the knot in the blue scarf “—will find us a nice place for lunch… with no Fedya.”
Rudy released her hand and glanced back at the store. “Couple more scarves,” he said, “we might make it to Finland.” They both chuckled.
Rudy zipped up his jacket and opened up the box of headsets. He checked the controls, then offered Ksenia one headset. “Do you mind?” he asked. “We have a lot of road left… and there’s a lot I’d like you to tell me.”
“About?”
“About everything,” Rudy said. “About… Astrakhan.”
Again Ksenia’s eyes welled. “Are you trying to make me cry?” she said quietly.
Rudy froze for a moment. “I’m sorry,” he said, starting to withdraw the headset. “We don’t have to—”
“Yes,” she said, stopping his retreat, “we do. I’ve just never talked about Astrakhan, with anyone, except Mama and Papa. But… ya tebye vsyo rasskazhu“—I will tell you everything, she said, her head still down. But then she wiped her eyes and looked straight at him, recovering her confidence. “A ty mnye?”—And you me?
Rudy nodded, and Ksenia took the headset. They tested the audio—a little loud by default, good for the road—then put on their helmets and gloves and got rolling again, stopping just once more in town, by a dumpster to dispose of Volodya’s heavy jacket and pants.
As they approached the bridge over the River Kostroma, Rudy recognized Fedya in his red tracksuit. The local goon was leaning against the railing of some stairs that led down to a street and a paved trail on the near bank. He must have heard the motorcycle coming—there was no other traffic around the bridge at the moment. Fedya turned, watched them roll closer, and flipped them the bird. Don’t do it, Rudy thought. Just get out of town. But just as he talked himself out of responding, he felt Ksenia pull her left arm free. Her balance shifted a little. Rudy glanced back and saw Ksenia’s arm and middle finger extend and sweep back, aimed right at Fedya. Rudy opened the throttle and shot across the Kostroma to roar through the west edge of Buy and head onward, northwest, farther into the northern forest, to (he recited the main towns and turns he’d memorized from the map at the store) Prechistoye, Vologda, Oshta, and Petrozavodsk.