A Dangerous Man

His hand dips in his pocket and comes out with a flick-knife. The blade pops open. He bends over my back and there’s a snap as he cuts the plastic bindings on my wrists. I sit up slowly, a rush of blood making my hands tingle and my head throb even worse. I sit and massage the deep red welts on my wrists.

– She brought us over last year.

He takes a seat in the flowered armchair.

– We had to leave Russia.

He takes another Marlboro Light from the box on the table next to him, sticks it in his mouth and lights it from the butt of his last one.

– Trouble.

He stubs the butt in a glass dish full of glass marbles.

– Our father. Our mother. Do you know what a Shakhidki is?

I shake my head.

– It is a Russian word for a word in Arabic. It is a female word.

He has one of those thin beards that trace the line of the jaw, a moustache just as thin arches from it to cross his upper lip. He traces it with a fingertip.

– You know anything about Chechnya?

I shake my head, still massaging my wrists.

– But you know what it is? A country? Part of the old USSR?

I nod. I press my hand to my forehead and find a residue of saliva. I wipe it off.

– You know there are rebels?

I nod.

– Yes. It is like the Middle East for Russia. Shit. It is a great pile of shit.

I gently run my hand over my face. Sometimes it helps. Sometimes it eases the pain. Not this time.

Widow’s Peak points at the door Mickey’s mother and Spiky went through.

– My brother, his name is Martin. I am Adam. Those are our American names. In Russia, we would be called something different. But here, these are our names. Tetka Anna thought of them for us.

He blows a smoke ring, watches it dissolve, thinking of his real name maybe. He stops thinking about it and looks back at me.

– Our father. My brother Martin and me, our father. He was an intelligence officer. In Chechnya. Very high up. Very important. He. Everybody must serve in Russia. Not like here. Everybody. My brother and me, we did not wait to be drafted. We served. Volunteers. In Chechnya. With our father. Intelligence.

He picks up the box of cigarettes. Holds it out to me. I shake my head. It hurts.

He shrugs and chains another.

– Intelligence. Interrogation. An interrogation unit we worked in. Our father put us there. To keep us out of combat. But it was.

He smokes.

– It was hard work. I think sometimes. Sometimes I think we would rather have fought. Martin would rather have fought. I know this.

He pulls the knife from his pocket and his thumb snaps it open and shut. Open and shut.

– OK. So. Yes. It was hard work. But it was over. Like all things. It was over.

Open and shut.

– I know English. I was almost. I could have taken another post. In Moscow. Somewhere. A city. I could have stayed in intelligence. But no. When we had served, we were done. Our father. He understood. Chechnya.

Open.

– He stayed. His duty. And our mother.

And shut.

– She stayed. Of course. And. There are people there. These women. They have lost husbands. Sons. So.

Open.

– So one of these women. She has a bag. A knapsack. She walks into a cafe. She sits at a table. She takes off her knapsack. She reaches inside of it. And the bomb inside goes off. And the intelligence officer sitting at the next table is blown up. And his wife he is having lunch with is blown up.

And shut.

– And this woman had lost men. Her husband and her boys. And so she became a Shakhidki. A holy warrior. The newspapers, they call them also black widows.

He slips the knife back in his pocket.

– And now you know what this is. And you know also.

He draws the last cigarette from the box and lights it.

– You know also, I think, that she is one, too.

He points at the closed door.

– Tetka Anna. A Shakhidki.

THERE’S MORE.

– Martin wanted to stay. To fight. He wanted to reenlist and fight in Chechnya. No interrogation this time. Guns. Battle. But he would have died. We both would have died. They knew who we were. The rebels. They knew our father. We would have been assassinated as soon as we returned. Anywhere in Russia we would be assassinated. And family. We still had family. Here. Tetka Anna.

Out of cigarettes, he has begun pacing again.

– After Mikhail was killed, she was calling all the time. To talk to our mother. She was so sad. When our mother was killed, she was more sad. And I told my brother, If we stay here we will be killed. He did not care. But I did. I told him, We can still do something. We have family. We can take care of Tetka Anna. For mother. For mother. He likes this. Taking care of someone else, it makes him. He does not forget, but it makes him better. We came here. And she is. There is only one thing she talks about. Yes? No. Two things. Her son. And you. We can do nothing about her son.

He returns to the chair, sits, and pokes at the butts in the glass dish. He finds one not quite half smoked and lights it.

– But maybe we can do something about you.

He takes a drag from the stale butt and makes a face, but he keeps smoking it.

– She told us that David believed you were dead. OK. We investigate. There are books. There are old TV programs. There is the Internet. And we find that there is no body. Something is wrong. In Chechnya, if a rebel is not there when the soldiers go to capture him, often the family says he has died. The soldiers say, Where is the body? And if there is no body, or if it is the wrong body, they bring us the family and we ask them questions. But your family, where are they? We do not know. We need. We need someone to ask questions. No. Someone we can ask questions. There are these things.

He points at the papers at my feet, at the photocopy of my ID. I pick up both papers.

– This was bought from a forger. He heard of Tetka Anna. Brought her these and sold them to her. She thought they could help. How? I do not know. But, the man who sold them. That is a man my brother and I must talk to.

I look at the photocopy and think about Billy. A young guy. A freelancer. A guy with a talent for computers and pieces of plastic.

I put the papers together and fold them between my hands.

Adam sucks a last bit of smoke from his butt, crushes it and begins digging for another.

– We went to him. Martin and I. The things. The things he knew. We had no idea.

He finds a suitable remnant, straightens and lights it.

– He does work for everyone. His work is valued. He does work for David. Not just forgery. But information. He has a gift for this. Like us. But different. His is with machines. Ours, not so. But we can learn what he knows.

He makes a noise, like a cat quietly coughing up a hairball, and drops the butt back in the dish. He sniffs at his fingertips and makes the sound again.