Ascendancies: The Best of Bruce Sterling by Bruce Sterling

Author:Bruce Sterling
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781497688124
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2015-10-05T23:25:28.984000+00:00

The Littlest Jackal

“I hate Sibelius,” said the Russian mafioso.

“It’s that Finnish nationalist thing,” said Leggy Starlitz.

“That’s why I hate Sibelius.” The Russian’s name was Pulat R. Khoklov. He’d once been a KGB liaison officer to the air force of the Afghan government. Like many Afghan War veterans, Khoklov had gone into organized crime since the Soviet crackup.

Starlitz examined the Sibelius CD’s print-job and plastic hinges with a dealer’s professional eye. “Europeans sure pretend to like this classic stuff,” he said. “Almost like pop, but it can’t move real product.” He placed the CD back in the rack. The outdoor market table was nicely set with cunningly targeted tourist-bait. Starlitz glanced over the glass earrings and the wooden jewelry, then closely examined a set of lewd postcards.

“This isn’t ‘Europe,’” Khoklov sniffed. “This is a Czarist Grand Duchy with bourgeois pretensions.”

Starlitz fingered a poly-cotton souvenir jersey with comical red-nosed reindeer. It bore an elaborate legend in the Finno-Ugric tongue, a language infested with umlauts. “This is Finland, ace. It’s European Union.”

Khoklov was kitted-out to the nines in a three-piece linen suit and a snappy straw boater. Life in the New Russia had been very good to Khoklov. “At least Finland’s not NATO.”

“Look, fuckin’ Poland is NATO now. Get over it.”

They moved on to another table, manned by a comely Finn in a flowered summer frock and jelly shoes. Starlitz tried on a pair of shades from a revolving stand. He gazed experimentally about the marketplace. Potatoes. Dill. Carrots and onions. Buckets of strawberries. Flowers and flags. Orange fabric canopies over wooden market tables run by Turks and gypsies. People were selling salmon straight from the decks of funky little fishing boats.

Khoklov sighed. “Lekhi, you have no historical perspective.” He plucked a Dunhill from a square red pack.

One of Khoklov’s two bodyguards appeared at once, alertly flicking a Zippo. “No proper sense of culture,” insisted Khoklov, breathing smoke and coughing richly. The guard tucked the lighter into his Chicago Bulls jacket and padded off silently on his spotless Adidas.

Starlitz, who was trying to quit, bummed a smoke from Khoklov, which he was forced to light for himself. Then he paid for the shades, peeling a salmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks.

Khoklov paused nostalgically by the Czarina’s Obelisk, a bellicose monument festooned with Romanov aristo-fetish gear in cast bronze. Khoklov, whose politics shaded toward Pamyat rightism with a mystical pan-Slavic spin, patted the granite base of the Obelisk with open pleasure.

Then he gazed across the Esplanadi. “Helsinki city hall?”

Starlitz adjusted his shades. When arranging his end of the deal from a cellar in Tokyo, he hadn’t quite gathered that Finland would be so relentlessly bright. “That’s the city hall all right.”

Khoklov turned to examine the sun-spattered Baltic. “Think you could hit that building from a passing boat?”

“You mean me personally? Forget it.”

“I mean someone in a hired speedboat with a shoulder-launched surplus Red Army panzerfaust. Generically speaking.”

“Anything’s possible nowadays.”

“At night,” urged Khoklov. “A pre-dawn urban commando raid! Cleverly planned. Precisely executed. Ruthless operational accuracy!”

“This is summer in Finland,” said Starlitz.

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