Of course, he could have pretended to be a machine and slipped off to his base, which long ago had been the Jatarang Indian restaurant. He might have moved on by, blind, deaf, and paying no attention to anything. But he was another type of machine entirely. And his capabilities and functions were very different. He had survived to the age of forty thanks only to his capacity to observe the details of his surroundings, any of which might prove a lethal threat to him.
Before, in the mountains of Afghanistan, death could lurk in the swaying movement of a twig, or the suspiciously smooth (not by the hand of the wind, but the hand of a minelayer) dust on the road.
Later, after he’d finished his service and killing became both his trade and his boss, with a big fat wallet, a lawyer, and a manager, the bony face of death could be hiding behind the dark tinted windows of a jeep, in a crowd, around the corner… anywhere. There was no front line anymore, no rear guard, no fortified base. The front line was wherever Max happened to be.
Now that he had chosen to play big time—which he did not so much for the money (he had enough already), but rather to prove to himself and to others that at the age of forty he could still be a match for any little twenty-year-old chump—he was surrounded by death on all sides. Theoretically, guns with silencers could be aimed at his forehead, and at the back of his skull, at his temples, right side, and left, simultaneously. It couldn’t be ruled out that at that very moment someone was aiming an infrared beam at the top of his head. Despite the enviable virtuosity of his five human senses, honed to perfection, he remained vulnerable. He needed his animal instinct. And it had not once betrayed him. Although just once would be enough.
Three weeks ago, Maxim had accepted an invitation to play an amusing game. The jackpot was ten million. The last player (out of twelve) left alive would be declared the winner. The rules were simple. The game board was the Moscow area, within the limits of the beltway. Each player chose his own weapon. You could hook a howitzer to the back of your jeep and drive around town with it, or carrry a sharpened nail file in your pocket. Players were to kill competitors in any way possible, filming the process on a webcam that was connected to an online server. The game’s powerful organizers refused assistance to contestants taken into police custody during play. Such individuals would be put on trial, hence disqualified from the game. They were allotted one month. If there was more than one player left alive when the time was up, the referee would draw lots and the unfortunates would be shot in the head.
The contenders were told that a group of around twenty millionaires were behind the game. They were the ones at the bottom of the Forbes list, the ones with only a sorry twenty or thirty million to their names, which they had come by in the drug trade or illegal gambling. Maxim didn’t really give a damn about who, what, or where. There’s a lot of money sloshing around in this sweepstakes, where folks bet on people, not on horses, cutting each other up with great expertise. As long as they coughed up the prize money at the end of it.
There were only six days left, but he was already bone-tired. He had killed not only five of his opponents, but nine others as well. Collateral damage, it’s called. Three of them were merely the victims of a misunderstanding. A case of mistaken identity. But they had acted suspicious too. And it wasn’t like he had a lot of time to make sure. In that situation, it’s just a matter of who pulls the trigger first. None of them pointed a gun at him, but then, not one of those poor suckers had even had a gun on him to shoot with. Tough luck.
Six of them deserved to die. One of the players had hired them as informers for next to nothing. They shadowed his opponents and kept him notified of their whereabouts. Maxim didn’t feel sorry for them at all. Nope. He recalled how one of them, a nervous guy of around thirty, begged him to spare his life. Said he needed the cash because his five-year-old daughter had sarcoma and needed expensive treatment, or she’d die. And if he died, she wouldn’t make it. Maxim almost let him go, in exchange for the telephone number of the player who hired him. But when he found out it was the same guy who had killed Arkady, his old army buddy, he couldn’t restrain himself. He broke the kid’s neck so quick the guy didn’t even notice his own death. It’s different if you’re nailed to a hospital bed, but not many healthy people see it coming. Death is especially quick at the hands of people who make it their profession. Fast as a bullet that has already found a home inside a lifeless body by the time the shot rings out.
Maxim sure hadn’t expected to find Arkady’s name among the players. They had been close friends back in Kandahar, with ghosts firing mortars at their marine company. And there was Nikita too. They had been the only ones left alive in their platoon. They made a vow of eternal friendship. But a lot had changed since then. Things were different now. And they weren’t the same guys they had been either. Life’s a bitch.
“I really need the cash,” said Arkady, staring at Maxim over the bridge of his nose. “I don’t have a choice.”
“I have no choice either,” Maxim replied. “Although I could do without the cash. In fact, I could even help you out, I’ve got some savings. But it’s too late now to call it quits.”
It was true, the players were already in the game. They’d signed a contract with the devil in blood. Refusal to continue with the game carried a risk of the secret being leaked, so any such player would be liquidated. Everything was absolutely fair. And gentlemanly.
Obviously, Maxim and Arkady agreed that they would not kill each other under any circumstances. If, by the end of the month, only the two of them were left, then lots would be drawn to decide the answer of “to be or not to be,” a bullet shot out of the barrel of a gun in a game of Russian roulette. After all, they were army buddies and not some pussy bastards off the street.
The agonizing problem solved itself, really.
He walked on, scanning everything up ahead—to the left, to the right, behind him—calculating all the possibilities for how the present situation might develop. Two clerks, a mother and daughter, three rough-looking losers, a wino, a student, a bum, a prostitute, an old man, WHO’S THAT? An athlete? Yes, definitely an athlete. Three teenagers with snowboards, a spaced-out druggie, WHO IS HE? HE’S GOT HIS RIGHT HAND IN HIS POCKET! No, his wrist is straight, and the pocket’s too small, yeah, he’s just a jerk. And old woman trying to look younger than her age, a suicide case definitely a suicide, a workaholic, a cop, a guy looking down at the grou—NIKITA!
Yes, it was him. It wasn’t easy to recognize the handsome and easygoing buddy he had known from his army days in this unkempt person, slumped over on a bench with a one-liter plastic bottle of extra strong Ohota beer. Ripped sneakers, his big toes nearly poking out of them, threadbare jeans, a filthy coat. Gray hair speckled his five-day-old stubble and made its way up to his temples and into his once black hair. But most horrifying of all was the expression in his eyes: dull and lonely like an autumn swamp. His gaze wasn’t staring inward. It wasn’t staring outward either. It was unfocused and wandering somewhere in the direction of nonexistence.
Maxim paused, although in the present situation this wasn’t very safe. But he couldn’t just walk past a friend who looked like he needed help.
“Nikita!”
“Oh, it’s you,” Nikita said, as though he hardly recognized the person he was speaking to.
“What’s all that?” asked Maxim, nodding at the plastic bottle that seemed to be a primary attribute of all the downtrodden and hopeless.
“You sure got this life thing all figured out. Looks like you got it made,” Nikita said, his voice so shrill he was almost shouting.