[Author’s Note: We're two days before Rin's encounter with Karkov.]
Daryl was not surprised he had ended up here, only that it took so long. Empty room with one door, small metal table, and two metal chairs, both chained to the table. Cheap fluorescent light, flickering. It was to be an interrogation, plain and not-so-simple. He wondered whether there was a company which specialized in drab Soviet-era decor for this sort of thing. Or maybe they just ordered it online.
He wasn’t fooled by the disarmingly mundane surroundings. Daryl was certain that if his answers proved unsatisfactory the proceedings quickly would move to a less mundane venue. Once someone started down this path, the best he could hope for was a quick death. That was what they typically promised, unless the subject seemed gullible enough to believe he could earn his freedom. Few were. It didn’t matter; both were lies. The best he actually could hope for was premature death at the hands of a particularly brutal guard. The fragility of the human body was a political prisoner’s best friend. If god really hated you, he made you resilient.
Something had aroused the suspicion of the Securitad, but Daryl wasn’t sure what. He doubted this simply was a case of overzealous law enforcement, though he hardly could complain if it was. He had entered the country to kill the head of intelligence, or whatever Karkov called himself. All he could fault them with was being too vigilant.
Daryl really wished he knew what had tipped them off, though. This would determine the sort of information they expected from him. If they just thought he was a thief or smuggler, it would be an easy enough part to play. That was the best scenario but also the least likely. All he could do was pray that the country’s recent renaissance had moved the Securitad to employ a gentler touch. He was all too familiar with their old methods.
The approach to the Capital had been uneventful, until it wasn’t. Rin’s plan had been for Daryl to impersonate a nondescript local, hardly a challenge for a man who had grown up as one. He was supposed to make his way to the Capital on his own, though she left the details to his discretion. Presumably this would reduce the risk of detection, since Karkov would be looking for a couple. Daryl was pretty sure it wouldn’t help in the slightest. In fact, Rin would likely be more conspicuous traveling alone.
Even if Karkov could not recognize her per se, he could detain every attractive young foreign woman. It wouldn’t be hard to pick out Rin from among these. A simple pin-prick test would do. To avoid troublesome questions, they could claim to be administering a vaccine for some local outbreak.
Even absent such measures, there always could be a repeat of last time. All it would take was one troublesome guard, and things could get out of hand. Daryl didn’t need to speculate about this. He had a front-row seat two decades earlier. That was a formative experience, and one which he did not wish on anyone else — though whether from jealousy or empathy was unclear.
Back then, the commotion must have given Karkov ample warning. Rin would not chance something similar this time. Somehow Daryl’s participation would mitigate that risk, though he had no idea how. Beyond infiltrating the Capital, Rin had not assigned him any special duty. If their initial rendezvous failed, presumably they would communicate through some means known only to her. Daryl had tried to explain that such a scheme only would work if both parties knew the secret.
He assumed he also would play some role in destroying Karkov, though Rin had not elaborated on that either. Even with his military background, Daryl had a difficult time imagining how he could help in this regard. The man not only was immortal, but probably as well-protected as Rin.
He had expected her to have him scout the city and perhaps arrange some sort of diversion. But she did not and dismissed those ideas when he brought them up. Daryl had a growing suspicion that Rin just wanted a partner and was scrounging for ways to keep him occupied.
Whatever her intent, the plan had been to get to the Capital by separate means and then meet right outside the Palace. This also made no sense to Daryl. Why was she neglecting the details of such a critical connection?
To make things worse, Rin had insisted on a communication blackout. Neither she nor Daryl brought their cell phones or any other means of contact. Was she deliberately trying to lose him or get him killed? There surely were easier ways to do so.
Daryl eventually stopped trying to fathom Rin’s motives and accepted that he once again was to serve as a soldier rather than a partner. At least, this time it was somewhat justifiable. She was thousands of years old and had known Karkov for that long, so Daryl decided to defer to her without critique or complaint. But this didn’t mean he liked it.
And it clearly had been a mistake. Daryl grimaced in anger when he awoke in the jail cell, his entire body aching. As he saw it, the problem wasn’t that Rin didn’t understand the threats faced by humans — as had been the case when he first started working with her. Nor was it that she clearly underestimated Karkov and somehow tipped their hand. The problem was that Rin was a hardheaded idiot. Daryl wondered whether she had been just as difficult when young. Clearly, the years hadn’t brought her wisdom or humility.
She had created an absurd plan, insisted it was the best way, and made clear she did not want any naysaying. Worst of all, he was pretty sure the plan existed solely to make him feel involved even though he likely would be of no help at all. It was patronizing and aggravating and now probably fatal. Sometimes he found Rin’s stubbornness and odd logic endearing. This wasn’t one of those times.
Daryl had entered the country almost a week ahead of Rin. Despite the apparent simplicity of his role, his preparations were far more involved than hers. He couldn’t just plop down on a bus and pretend to be a ditzy tourist. He arrived by commercial flight and cleared immigration with an American passport. As far as anyone knew, this was his first time visiting the country.
It took some effort to tune out anything but English, and more than once Daryl had to stifle the impulse to reply in his native tongue. Fortunately, the security apparatus was meant to keep locals from leaving rather than the other way around. Nobody paid incoming passengers any mind. He had been hoping for this. Under close scrutiny, his accent and complexion would have raised some eyebrows.
Once he was through customs, things got a little more complicated. The airport was close to the Capital, but Daryl had been instructed by Rin to enter as an inconspicuous local. Whatever he thought of her plan, he would follow it as best he could. This meant shedding his American identity.
In the old days the Securitad had kept an eye on almost all foreigners, especially Americans. When occasionally confronted about this, the agency argued it was for their own protection. Things could get rough in places, and they simply were taking prophylactic measures to avoid an international incident. Such direct surveillance was far from perfect. If the subject vanished, the Securitad didn’t make much effort to track him down. Instead, they relied on informants to keep them apprised of anything unusual.
If the missing tourist engaged in the sort of behavior most missing tourists engaged in, they’d let him be. That was where most real tourist revenue came from anyway. Local police would step in if the subject appeared likely to get himself killed, but only college kids were that dumb. Occasionally, some middle-aged divorcee actually would try to get himself killed. Those they just deported. The country wasn’t a garbage dump, and the police resented people who acted otherwise. More than likely, they’d slap the guy around a bit before being kicking him out. Maybe the experience would give him a new appreciation for life. The Securitad frowned on suicide.
On the other hand, if the tourist turned out to be a spy things were more complicated. Reeducation was for locals, and most foreign spies were left alone. Occasionally one was expelled, but that only happened when their behavior was particularly egregious. Most never even knew they had been compromised. Instead, the Securitad fed them false information by various means. Either way, visitors almost always made it home, no worse for wear except maybe for an STD or two.
Daryl wasn’t sure whether they still engaged in this sort of blanket surveillance of foreigners, but he couldn’t chance it. Despite the cosmetic improvements to the countryside, he doubted the Securitad itself had changed much. It was the one organ which never changed. Even when the Soviet Union fell, the intelligence apparatus remained intact. In fact, it ended up running the country. Certainly the Securitad was the same as before, even if they smiled a bit more and had crisper uniforms.
There was a large town ninety miles from the Capital, and Daryl took a bus bound for it. There, he exchanged a few hundred US dollars into local currency at a usurious rate, bought suitable clothes, and boarded another bus.
The Capital was surrounded by a ring of four smaller cities, technically big towns, and approximately arranged at the points of a compass but rotated 45 degrees. This was no accident. The Capital area had been designed from scratch as part of a major public project a half century earlier. As a result, the whole region had a distinctly artificial feel. Because smaller towns hadn’t arisen organically, there was an underpopulated annulus between the Capital and its satellites. Only in the last few years had the advent of suburbs begun to change this.
In the second city, Daryl arranged for forged documents. He had done this there once before, and the process was materially the same. It was a simple equation: money went in, papers came out. The papers were primitive, but that didn’t matter. Even now, most people outside the Capital had no documentation. Papers were required for certain official purposes, but those purposes still had little meaning in the countryside. As a result, when somebody wished to work in the Capital or move there or even just visit, they needed to obtain papers. Bureaucracy was the first warning sign of civilization.
Naturally, it was well-nigh impossible for the type of person who needed papers to navigate the bureaucracy and get them. This left two options: bribe an official for real documents or hire someone to forge them. Bribery was expensive and carried a significant risk of arrest, while forgery was cheap, ubiquitous, and relatively safe. It was an open secret that most cell-phone shops engaged in this sort of thing, and the vast majority of people in the Capital sported fake documents. Such forgeries were essential to the system and — aside from the occasional conspicuous crackdown — people chose not to check too closely.
Once his papers had been acquired, Daryl took a couple of days to indulge in minor nostalgia, though he avoided places he might be recognized. He did this from an abundance of caution and knew there was little real danger of it. Nobody knew where he had been the past twenty years or what he looked like now. Stories such as his were common and didn’t draw suspicion, but he preferred not to tempt fate. By now any desultory State surveillance had been evaded, and he presented as an unremarkable peasant.
Early in the morning of the third day, Daryl boarded a bus to the Capital. When he disembarked at the main station, he instinctively looked around for Rin before remembering that she would not arrive for a few more days. Why was that again? As before, the whole thing made no sense. How would he even find her?
Then he noticed a man standing with a placard that said “Darrouil” in large untidy letters. It was a common enough name, and Daryl hoped this was mere coincidence. A walkie-talkie on the man’s belt squawked. Picking it up, he listened for a few moments before muttering something in response. Replacing the device, the man looked directly at Daryl and waved him over.
Was Rin really obtuse enough to have him picked up like this? Daryl did feel a tiny hint of satisfaction that she had remembered his real name, even if she never used it with him. Something felt off. Rin never would allow him such satisfaction, not even a tiny hint of it.
Daryl smiled and waved back, but instead of starting toward the man he pushed off with his foot and sprinted in the opposite direction. To his surprise, he encountered something hard and felt an excruciating pain tear through his torso. Then he collapsed. The large man shook his head slowly and looked at the placard, apparently unsure what to do with it now.