Excerpts From Nonexistent Books

“I need you to find someone,” the dame said. “Someone…close to me.”

“Your husband?” I irritably blinked the late-evening sunshine from my eyes, the tattered blinds not holding up their end of the bargain.

“My…companion.”

Her lover.

“Fair enough.” I poured a fresh glass, the stiff smell of alcohol–officially a “health tonic” to get around the Volstead–mixing with the “herbs” ground up in the bottom of the glass. I’m a snoop. I deal in euphemisms if they keeps the boys in the precinct off my back and my customers comfortable. “The cost will depend on how long and what I find. Whether I accept or not depends on who. I’m sure you know that I have a reputation for being choosy, and ironically it’s not by choice.”

The woman nodded. “This is him,” she said, passing a Coney Island souvenir snapshot of the two together across my desk. “Max Schliemann. Dockworker and…laborer.”

She hadn’t offered her own name, and I didn’t ask. The photo, though…you could never be sure, of course, but he seemed to have “the look.” Had to be sure, though. “Can you describe your ‘companion’ a bit more? His personality, his haunts, that sort of thing? Any unusual behavior?”

“Max has…a savage temperament,” the woman said delicately. “Very passionate and devoted, but often…mercurial. About a dozen times a year, he will get in an…unsettled…mood and often disappear until he sorts himself out.”

I nodded. “A day or two at most? Likes hanging around Central Park or Elysian Fields when his savage temperament flares up and he gets unsettled? Getting back to nature, as it were?”

“Yes, yes,” the woman gushed, grateful that I had been able to read between the lines.

“Has Max ever hurt anyone during one of his…unsettled savage episodes?”

The woman squeezed her clutched hands tightly together. “Not any…one,” she said. “Can you find him? Tell me you can find him. I’m afraid this time he’s not coming back.”

I grinned, showing the emergent fangs that not even the wolfsbane in my glass could fully suppress on the night of the waxing full moon. “I think so, ma’am. I think so.”

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Ohns woke up before the other two, and was startled to find the sun gone. Dark clouds, some grey and others fading to black, covered the sky, and the normal warm breeze of the lake had become a chill wind. Tiny hairs rose on Ohns’ arms, which were suddenly covered with goosebumps.

He thought of waking up Fer and Shua, asking them what was going on, but then he caught sight of a small figure at the lakeshore, dark hair whipping in the breeze.

Ohns ran up to him. “Hey, kid!” he said. “Who are you?”

The stranger–a year or so younger than Ohns, and shorter–turned around. He had a thin face, a sad face, and his large brown eyes seemed to brim with tears. He didn’t seem to see the boy next to him, the one pelting him with questions.

“Are you all right?” Ohns asked. “What’s happening?”

The strange child looked at Ohns, as if seeing him for the first time. “Where did you come from?” he asked.

“What?” Ohns said.

“Where did you come from?” The boy’s voice was distant, sad.

“I don’t understand.”

A fresh gust of wind tore down the beach. “Where did you come from?”

“I…I don’t remember!”

The strange child held out his hands. “Help me.”

“What do you mean?” Ohns cried, but his words were carried away by the gale.

There was no answer. The child turned back toward the lake and, as Ohns watched, simply faded away into nothingness. As he did so, the wind warmed and died, and the sun peeked through the clouds. Within a moment, the lake was back to its old self, and Ohns was left alone, water lapping at his toes, with no answers.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean?’” a voice behind him asked.

Ohns jumped, even though it was just Fer. “Huh?”

“You just yelled “what do you mean?’” Fer said. “I thought you were talking to me. I didn’t say anything, though.”

“Did you see him? Did you see the clouds, and the wind?”

“You can’t see the wind, silly,” Fer said. “Nobody out here but you. Shua’s still snoring in bed. “ She giggled. “No clouds, either. What are you talking about?”

“There was another kid here,” Ohns said. “In the wind and the dark. He had black hair, and he kept asking me questions.”

Fer gave him a funny look. “What kind of questions?”

“He asked me where I came from.”

“And you know the answer, right?” Fer asked. “You told him the answer?”

“No. What is it? Do you know? Where did I come from?”

“You’ve always been here, silly,” said Fer.

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Meetings of KGB Spetsbureau 13 took place in a well-appointed conference room on the fourth floor of the fortified Lubyanka building in central Moscow. The large conference table was always well-appointed with dossiers and information direct from the archives, as well as boxes of imported luxury cigarettes provided for the comfort of participants.

Colonel Shchusev, chairing the meeting, always brought his own smokes: a battered pack of Belomorkanals (“the strongest cigarette in the world” as he proudly called them). The Colonel had been smoking that brand since he had been a Young Pioneer, and he wasn’t about to give it up in favor of the effete European brands on the table. The meeting didn’t begin until Shchusev’s Belomorkanal was lit.

“In the dossier in front of you,” he said through a cloud of smoke and yesterday’s bottle, “is about one Katalin Kovácha, daughter of Lázár Kovách. That name ring any bells?”

“He’s the premier of the People’s Republic of Banat,” said Captain Osadchy across the table. “Took Dourai’s post in ’54 after having the old premier shot, wasn’t it?”

“The very same,” said Shchusev. “It seems that Premier Kovách is a doting father and widower that can deny his only child nothing. She’s never known anything but the sweet life of Banatian largesse, and Daddy has made her both his heir apparent and his acting minister for the arts.”

“Oh dear,” mumbled Major Gorelov at Shchusev’s right hand. “Another spoiled brat like Brezhneva?”

“Worse,” said Shchusev, tapping his copy of the dossier. “It’s not just parties and drinking and self-gratification. Look at these receipts and travel logs: using state funds to travel to an ashram in India for a month. Using state funds to travel to Mexico for a ‘spirit quest.’ Using state funds to bring Salvador Dali to Banat for an art show.”

“And she’s the one Kovách wants to take over Banat when those polyps in his colon finally kill him?” sighed Osadchy. “This is where we come in, I assume.”

“That is correct.” Shchusev expelled a cloud of noxious smoke. “Until recently it was an internal matter that we trusted the Banatians to handle as a family squabble. But it has recently become a matter of state concern. As your folders show, gentlemen, Katalin Kovácha will be announced as vice-premier on 1 November during Lázár Kovách’s annual Independence Day speech in Timisoara.”

Gorelov thumbed through his copy, grimacing. “Psychics, telepaths, gurus, New Age quacks, yoga…is there any psuedo-spiritual religious fad she hasn’t thrown herself and her father’s funds into? I agree with Colonal Shchusev. This woman cannot be allowed to wield political power in any form beyond staging art shows.”

“So, what’s it to be, then?” said Osadchy. “Scandal? Expose an affair? Manufacture one with a handmaiden? A preemptive beating?”

“Death,” said Shchusev gravely. “The order has been countersigned by the Chairman, who you all know has the confidence of the General Secretary. The task laid before us, gentlemen, is to dispose of Katalin Kovácha in a covert, wet operation before 1 November…and to make it look like an accident.”

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