Dieselpunk: An Anthology (25 page)

A few blessedly short seconds and several lungfuls of chlorine gas later, Rousseau joined the shooters in death. She wheezed out her last ragged breath and released the last of her bowels.

Tabitha stood and grabbed her boots, pulling them on and stomping her heels into place quickly. People were beginning to gather outside, murmuring in Russian. She grabbed the bag that held her extra pistol clips from beside the bed. Tabitha shrugged the pack over one shoulder, walked over to the first shooter, and went through his pockets for extra shotgun shells. She found ten, wondered at why anyone would need fifteen shots to kill anything, and stuffed them in the deep pockets of her buffalo coat. The Templar walked over to the next body and did the same, finding eight rounds this time. She put them in her pockets with the other ten, figuring she might need them. The irony was not lost on her as she stood and looked behind her to check on the gas’s progress.

It was beginning to come out of the room now, and the other patrons were backing away from it and her, the crazy woman with the gasmask and shotgun, but they still hadn’t put enough distance between them and the chlorine. “Shit,” she said. Tabitha shouldered the shotgun and pointed it at the crowd. They screamed, raising their hands and stepping back. She fired once into the ceiling over their heads, bringing down clumps of plaster. The group broke and, with a resounding howl, stampeded down the hall in either direction. At least they didn’t charge towards the toxic cloud behind her.

Tabitha walked down the hall to the stairs, shotgun resting on her shoulder. Once she was sure she was far enough away from the room, she pulled the gasmask on top of her head, cursing as the straps pulled at her hair.

Tabitha mulled over who had attacked her as she walked down the stairs. She checked off her run-ins so far with the other players in this little farce, trying to find the culprit. Could it have been Crowley? Probably not. Harry Wight? Maybe, but he was probably too scared of her to do anything like that. Some other player? The Pinkertons? Rousseau was in her room when they’d attacked, so that idea was nixed. The Templar reached the ground floor, sorting through the likely suspects. Still uncertain of Rousseau’s killers, Tabitha left the hotel as inconspicuously as a woman carrying a shotgun could.

Tabitha stepped down from the hired coach in front of the park that surrounded the Alexandre Nevsky monastery. It was the only place she could think to go.

She paid the driver a handful of rubles and set off through the woods towards the complex of buildings. The grounds of the Orthodox monastery, even in the midnight dark, put the Order of the Knights Templar’s to shame. She made a mental note to mention this to the abbot. Maybe he could add eleven or twelve church wings onto the order’s home in Chicago.

She trudged through the snow and stopped at the simple wrought-iron gateway that closed the monastery off from the rest of the city. An Orthodox crucifix was set into the keystone at the apex of the arch. Beyond the gate rose the aptly named Gate Church. Its exterior walls were a yellow stucco and its domed steeple rose into the snowing sky. The main door was at ground level, but two sets of curving stairs started on either side and went to a second floor entrance. Fifty or more yards of cemetery were between her and the church. Headstones crowded together, marking the resting place of the deceased for friends, family, and God. Tabitha never understood that last one. Why would you need to mark a body for God? She’d seen some wondrous shit in her short life and figured God could make anyone whole again when the end of the world came. But, then again, she never was a good Catholic.

Tabitha let herself in through the unlocked gate. She moseyed down the stone path to the Gate Church, stopping occasionally to look at the friezes of dead men’s faces on some of the tombstones. She didn’t bother trying to read names, dates, or epitaphs. The inscriptions were all in Russian, and Russian was beyond her reading skills.

The Templar arrived at the front door finally and pounded with the large knocker. She really hoped someone would let her in for the night. The idea of huddling inside her buffalo coat till dawn inside a church cemetery didn’t warm her. After a few minutes of waiting, she pounded with the knocker again just to get the feeling back in her arms. This time she didn’t stop till someone came to the door.

Catholic monks and Orthodox monks are about as different as can be. Your normal Catholic monk is oftentimes clean shaven, keeps his head uncovered except by a hood, and wears different robes based on his order. This Orthodox monk had a white beard to his waist, his head was covered with a
kalymafki
, a hat that looked like a somber fez.

He stepped back at the site of Tabitha being armed to the teeth. Tabitha shrugged and asked, “
Utočiště?
” The monk said something else in Russian, to which she replied, “I don’t fucking speak Russian.” He tried another phrase and the Templar just shook her head. He stepped forward and looked out into the cemetery and into the night sky. He looked at her, smiled as warmly as you can at a strange, pretty woman wearing a fur coat and carrying a shotgun, and blew into his hands and rubbed them together. He stepped back into the church and waved her in.

“
Mluvit Anglicky?
” she asked as he led her into the dark church. He looked back and shook his head. “
Mluvite Cesky?
”

He looked back and said, “
Nestaskií.
”

Not enough.
Great
, Tabitha thought.

Tabitha followed the monk through the church to a back area. He opened a door to a small room and led her inside. It was cool there, but not overtly cold. A spartan bed with full bedding and a pillow were pushed into the corner. She set her bag on the bed. The monk said something in Russian as she sat next to her bag and began to pull her boots off. He bowed to her, smiling, and Tabitha nodded in return. The monk set his lamp on the bedside table and left the room.

Tabitha disrobed and put her already chambered pistol beneath her pillow. She crawled into bed and went to sleep, dreaming the same horrible nightmares she dreamed when she was back in the States.

Tabitha awoke early the next morning to find a small tray, holding a bowl of thick gruel and a cup of broth, on the bedside table. She dressed and ate it quickly, wondering about the night before. She’d only been in Petrograd one day and had been contacted by one secret society, a government agency, and a detective working on contract for the Pinkertons who were, in turn, contracted by the oil magnate Rockefeller. Add to that being shot at by two of her own countrymen who, owing to their weaponry, could only have belonged to some sort of government agency, and you had a whole mess of people involved.

She ate the last of the gruel. As she was setting it aside and picking up the cooling broth, there was a respectful sounding knock at the door. Reflexively, she drew her pistol from beneath the pillow and cocked it. “Come on in,” she called.

The door opened. In stepped a thin, bald man with an impressive mustache. He wore an expertly tailored black suit and tie and carried a cane he didn’t seem to need.

“May I enter, madame?” he asked in a thick accent Tabitha couldn’t place. His gaze flickered down to the pistol and back to the Templar’s face. “I could come back later,” he said, raising both his hands as an easy smile touched his lips.

Tabitha couldn’t help smiling. “Sorry, reckon I’m just paranoid.” She uncocked the pistol and set it on the table. She looked back at the man, who still hadn’t entered. “Where are my manners? Come in, please.”

The man walked into the small cell and quietly shut the door behind him. “I apologize for coming during your breakfast, but I heard from one of the monks that a strange Yankee woman had arrived during the night.” He pulled out the chair from the writing desk and set it in front of her and seated himself. “From the description, I knew it must be the famous Knight Templar Dame Tabitha Piotrowski.”

“
Reckon you got me over a barrel there, cause I got no idea who you are.”

“
Forgive me,” he said, standing. “My name is George Ivanovich Gurdjieff. I am in the city to obtain an artifact.” Gurdjieff bowed and sat.

Tabitha rolled her eyes. “God, not one of you guys again.”

Gurdjieff laughed deeply. He had a good, sincere laugh. “I apologize,” Gurdjieff said after he’d settled down, “but whenever these items appear, we do seem to congregate, do we not? It’s the curse of our chosen profession.”

Tabitha smiled. She kind of liked this one. At least he wasn’t trying to grope her. “So, you’re after the Cock of Osiris too?”

Gurdjieff shook his head, smiling. “Cock? You Yankees. No, I am not after it in the sense you think,” he said. “I know of its power and I know of the storm that is coming to this land.”

“
Seen it in a vision or heard it from an angel?”

“
Neither,” he said, “I just read the papers. The workers are finally finished with the tsars. But, there are those within the Workers’ Party and the tsar’s government that would greatly desire the Phallus if they knew of its existence. A revolution, good or ill, is coming to this land and there are those who would use it to either take power, or to keep it.”

“
What’re you angling at, then?” Tabitha asked.

“
For you and your order to get the artifact out of Russia safely,” he replied, smiling. “I could try to obtain it, but I see no sense in it. I am not the owner of a monastery with a vault of antiquities, nor do I command a small army to defend one. The Templars, on the other hand, have both of those things, and the understanding of why objects such as these must be kept from the hands of men.”

Tabitha nodded. “I like you, Georgie. You ain’t like the rest.”

“Thank you, Tabitha, I take that as a compliment,” Gurdjieff replied.

“
Alright,” Tabitha said. “How do you propose we get this artifact?”

“
The easy way,” Gurdjieff said. “From the owner: Grigori Rasputin.”

Over the next half-hour Gurdjieff told Tabitha about Rasputin. He had been a peasant in Siberia and had come wandering out of the wilds into Petrograd (St. Petersburg at the time) in 1903. He had strange, mystic powers, that some attributed to God, others to the Virgin Mary, and still others to Satan. Gurdjieff believed it to be a fourth option: the Phallus of Osiris.

Two years after his arrival in the city, Tsarina Alexandra summoned him for aid in healing Tsarevich Alexei, the tsar’s son, from a blood disorder, the royal disease of incessant bleeding. Rasputin was successful. What all the doctors in Russia were unable to do, Rasputin had done through mere contact with the boy. The tsarina was entranced and Rasputin became her chief adviser.

But, in the last eleven years, things had changed. Rasputin was known to frequent brothels and had taken to heavy drinking. The most heinous accusations were those of raping a nun and many others. The drinking accusation wasn’t the most curious, though Tabitha had to wonder at how much drinking would be considered too much by Russian standards, but the  lack of sexual inhibition Rasputin exhibited. It was like an addiction, something that had to be fed. She said as much to Gurdjieff.

“I agree,” replied Gurdjieff. “It is like he is in great need of sexual concourse every night, as if he is never satiated by human contact.”

“
Well, shit Georgie, my ex-husband had the same problem, and, believe me, he didn’t have some magical prick.”

Gurdjieff laughed and said, “No, I do agree with you. Men are men, are they not? Many display the same characteristics of Rasputin, but not many of them are able to heal others and control with their minds. This is why I and many in the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church believe he has the artifact.”

“So, how do you know all this?”

Gurdjieff sat back, hands held out and turned upwards. “I am a friend of the Church here, but am not part of it. Many of the priests and monks come to me. I do not ask them for favors or offer them any, as Rasputin does. We discuss many things.”

“But they asked you for one didn’t they?”

“
Not precisely, but in a manner of speaking, yes. My own beliefs and feelings on this subject are as I have described, and, in that, are kindred to the Church’s. We wish only to have this vile artifact, this Phallus of Osiris, gone from Russia so it does not fall into the wrong hands.”

Tabitha snorted. “And you think the Catholic Church is the place to keep it? Cause they’ve never had power issues.”

Gurdjieff laughed again and said, “No, of course not. But, in the past, the Templars themselves have risen up against their order and against the Church to ensure the gathered artifacts did not fall into the wrong hands. I trust you, because you Knights Templar only seek redemption through service and protection. You have felt power, and realized that some power is not worth having while one has a conscience. This is not the way of the old Templars, but it is the way of the new.”

Tabitha nodded. After a moment she said, “Alright, tell me where I can find Rasputin.”

Tabitha left the monastery later that morning, having eaten an early lunch with Gurdjieff. He really was a curious man, and strangely attractive, too. Something about his eyes. Tabitha shook her head as she walked through the cemetery and adjusted the new bag that hung from her right shoulder. The monks had given it to her. It was large enough to fit her shotgun so that she wasn’t walking the streets of Petrograd with it on display.