dacha

In the middle of an empty room, furnished with a doorless frame, a few boarded-up windows, and a missing plaster, stood a chair. Several ropes and a piece of sharply worn rag were tangled between the wooden legs. Halfway between the furniture and the threshold of the only door, a man lay in a growing pool of blood. A pair of boots bearing the tall owner's name stopped beside his head. She tucked the smoking gun into her breast pocket, turning two rows of gold teeth to her companion, and said,

"We just popped out for some rolls, and oh, how fast they are." The Russian scratched his head, which lacked any hairstyle, and then, picking up a piece of green glass, continued his reconnaissance. "And that's from your bottle. I told you alcoholism isn't healthy, I told you it kills, well, you got it."

The second one looked down and muttered,

"Did you have to shoot? Did you have to?" He'd barely crawled, and you'd put five bullets in his back!... and in his back, too!

"Well, if he was crawling, how was I supposed to shoot? Turn him sideways? We were supposed to make sure he didn't get away, oh...

" "With his knees shot out, he wouldn't have tired from running," he hissed through his teeth. He narrowed his eyes even more, though now they looked practically closed. Even though the bald man was almost a head taller, he suddenly felt strangely tiny.

"Don't look at me like I'm some dilettante... dilettante... someone incompetent, oh... We'll say it was an accident at work, and that's it." He felt his partner's overwhelming gaze begin to make him sweat. "Well... I bought some rolls, there's still jam, butter... maybe we should eat something?" He stammered the last word and whispered.

"Well, there's no point in crying over a stiffened corpse." Let's go, Andrej, a change of climate whets the appetite. He smiled. With two rows of his own white teeth.

Andrej sighed with relief, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and followed his companion out through the only door in the room, whose solitude was filled by a corpse in a navy blue suit sprawled on the floor. The shade of blood matched the color of the tie, distinguishing only the wide white stripes running at a subtle angle.

***

In the middle of the desert, here and there overgrown with dried-out something-that-was-once-green, a gravel road wound between rusted wrecks of cars, barrels, wires, and a whole host of other ironwork. Whichever way you turned, you could paint the same landscape: desert, horizon, cloudless sky. But if you were standing in the middle of the road, where the road faded into the horizon, you would see a growing, dusty black spot. And if he turned around, a half-wooden, half-brick, almost completely dilapidated shack would loom before his eyes. A black Mercedes parked in front of the dacha, next to it two wooden chairs. A length of rope was twisted between the legs of one.

On the hood of a luxury car, among crumbs of bread rolls, lay remnants of butter and a jar of strawberry jam. Beneath it, a drying stain of milk, the remainder of which was in a carton held by a tall, broad-shouldered man with a gleaming bald head. Beside him sat a slightly shorter man, with sharp eyes and sun-damaged skin. Dressed in a perfectly fitted black suit, his gaze swept the desert sand, darting from piles of scrap metal to piles of rusty wire. When he spotted a steadily enlarging dot, gaining more detail with each passing moment, he stiffened. The diner, wearing a too-tight jacket, suddenly stopped scratching and adjusting his figure. He made a visor with his hand, even though both figures were shrouded in the shadow cast by the building. He sighed and asked,

"So how do we explain this to them? Should we say it was an accident at work, or that he was trying to escape, or what?"

"We'll say it was in self-defense...

" "Well, not stupid.

" "Stupid. With his wrists shot through, he wouldn't have raised the gun to shoot. We could say he tried to bite us to death.

" "But... do you seriously think they'll fall for it?

" "Sure, although... no, sorry, that won't work either, we broke half his teeth...

" "Damn, you should have used less bludgeoning. I heard, for example, that those slant-eyed guys, whatever their name... those...

" "The Chinese," the shorter man finished through his teeth.

"Exactly, well, they use this thing: they place a bowl of water over the perpetrator, make a hole in the water... I mean, in a bucket, and then a hole in the head... I mean, the head is tied to a chair, and then when the water seeps through the hole in itself... I mean, in a bucket, I guess..."

"But if they tie the head by the neck, the patient will suffocate, right?" he said, quite seriously.

"Well... well, yes... these Chinese tortures are stupid anyway..." The bald man looked at his companion's face; it had many scars. Some were probably from drunken fights, but most were evidence of experience. In any case, it aged him by a dozen years.

"So what are we going to do?"

"We'll talk.

" "Us? With them? So, what, oh?"

"Okay, I'll talk...

"

The air filled with the dry crackle of individual gunshots. For the second time in over a dozen minutes. The figure sitting under the warped washing machine crouched even more as another round of shots erupted. The washing machine stood beneath a window that hung in the now-hole-riddled wooden wall of the dilapidated cottage. A body lay facedown on the pierced side by the entrance, one foot on the threshold, the other in the room. "I guess using your accomplices as a bullet shield is a bit unethical," the man thought, tightening his grip on the handle of his worn-out revolver. "A bit like something out of a Western," he added to himself as his employers emptied each magazine. "They'll run out eventually, I'll wait." The whistling of bullets faded. "They probably decided they must have hit me eventually and will leave. Or they'll go in to check their aim, and then they'll call...

" "Give me a grenade," he heard from outside the window.

He was surprised. Very surprised.

***

Three people were leaning against a black BMW. They regretted not bringing sausages. A five-meter-high flame rose before them, quickly consuming a building parched by the desert sun. The whole thing, in the setting sun, looked exceptionally picturesque. The first of them regretted not bringing his camera.

"I know it looks good, but we have to go back, boys.

" "Do we?" they both sighed.

"Yeah, we still have to get one of them some concrete shoes.

" "Heh," they were twins, and they often spoke at the same time.

"Hey, stop scratching yourself with the doorknob! At least check if it's secured.

" "You're not my mother, you don't tell me where to scratch," the larger twin slowly said.

He decided to shut up. People like that should be treated like Rottweilers. They might be your own dog, but they could bite your arm off. Besides, it would be a really good postcard. It was one of the perks of this job. Two minus signs stood next to each other. That's why he wondered why he'd never become a lawyer, a policeman, or even a postal clerk. Such a job had

fewer minuses. Although there weren't many pluses either. He could arrange his life that way, settle down, maybe get married, and then live off a small—low, but at least decent—pension. And if he had to execute, at least do it himself, not with

the idiots assigned to him.

A gunshot filled the evening silence. Then screams, jumping several keys up, sang the melodic words of backyard Latin in a soprano.

One minus was curled up in a pool of blood, the other, jumping around him, stared at his superior with terrified, dull eyes and muttered,

"Do something, f... see what the f... what's going on..."

"I can finish him off so he doesn't have to suffer..."

The narrower man froze in place; no one can create a terrified expression better than those who fear nothing. That was precisely the expression this man wore. Surprised, terrified, disoriented. Yet, despite everything, the dullness that always accompanied his face pierced through everything.

The air was filled with the sound of gunfire again. The screams faded after two, then three more echoed through the air. The creak of a door opening, followed a moment later by the slam of a closing one, preceded the roar of an engine. As soon as the car drove away, the silence was broken only by the cracking of burning boards.