Page 13 of Ascendent
Ilya rolled his eyes. “All right, back to work.” He dragged his mountain of toppled binders across the table, spreading them out as he pulled out his pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
“Ilya,” Sergey chuckled. “It’s eight in the morning. On Sunday.”
Ilya flicked his lighter, sucking down his cigarette as it lit. “And?” He blew out a puff of smoke, waved to the binders. “None of this will fix itself. You think ignoring all this will make it go away?Hmm?”
Laughing, Sergey held up his hands, surrendering to Ilya’s browbeating. “Okay, okay. I will work.” He squeezed Sasha’s knee, ran his hand up his thigh. Sasha was wearing the sweats Dr. Voronov had given him during his recovery months ago and a t-shirt that was too tight for him. His shoulders seemed impossibly broad, delta wings of a MiG that could block out the sun. He wanted to tell Ilya to get lost, wanted to drag Sasha back to bed. Sasha was impossibly adorable, soft in a way he never was. Sleep mussed his hair, had smoothed the creases from his face.
“Sashunya, you don’t have to stay. You can go back to bed. Ilya won’t leave until I bleed for him, until he works me into an early grave––”
Ilya snorted.
“––but you can rest.”
“I need to start preparing.” Sasha stretched, his long arms rising over his head, his shirt riding up, revealing his belly button, the trail of blond hair that stretched into his waistband. Sergey’s mouth watered, and his thoughts ran dry. “Colonel Sharp said he left materials with you?” Sasha stuttered. “I didn’t mean you personally––”
“My office handled your application. Colonel Sharp sent the preliminary packet before he even met you, and I had everything printed. I was certain you would be accepted.” He’d planned to deliver the materials to Sasha at the hotel, his parting gift. Ten binders in all, NASA’s preparatory work for incoming international astronaut recruits. He’d already arranged for Sasha’s medical care at the University of Moscow hospital with the number one surgeon in the whole country. The future of Russia’s space program was going to receive only the best.
At the end of the table waited another stack of binders. Sergey nodded to them. Sasha padded barefoot to the pile, flipped through the first two. His eyes flicked to Sergey. He smiled.
“Great,” Ilya interrupted. Smoke billowed around his words as he spoke, filled the air above their coffee cups. “Pretty Boy’s got something to do. Can we work now?”
Sergey rolled his eyes. “Ilya––”
“I’m going for a run, then to the gym.” Sasha snapped the binder closed.
The Kremlin boasted multiple gyms. One was a gaudy, ostentatious thing, outfitted with cameras and mirrors and room for journalists to ogle. It had been the darling of Putin, and featured the best weight machines, wrestling mats, and sparring rings for the former president’s martial arts events. Since the end of Putin’s term, it had gathered dust. Only Sergey was supposed to use it.
Exercise was not Sergey’s preferred pastime.
His bodyguards and the military officers stationed at the Kremlin used the basement gyms and the armory. They were gloomy, drab places lit by dusty bulbs, where the rank stench of sweat and adrenaline had fused to the concrete walls, the cracked mats. Dumbbells from World War II rested on handmade wooden racks, and punching bags hung from rusted chains in the corners. Sergey knew Sasha had found a home in one of the basement gyms. He’d worked out with his former bodyguards a few times, had worked the speed bag and sparred with a few military attaches.
Sergey used to make excuses to summon Sasha after his workouts, to call him to his office or his apartment when he knew Sasha would see his text as soon as he’d finished. Sasha would appear dutifully, sweat soaked, breathing hard, and––as much as he could be back then––relaxed. It had been good to see.
“Enjoy yourself. But don’t push too hard.” Sergey pinned Sasha with a lean stare. “You must go see Dr. Voronov today. You will need another IV of antibiotics.”
Sasha scowled.
“Just until you have your spleen replaced. Then, no more IVs.” Sergey’s hands sliced through the air. “Until then, you will take care of yourself,da?”
Ilya snorted, rolling his eyes and exhaling a ragged grunt of smoke. “Yes, papa,” he mimicked, shaking his head. “Are you his lover or his father,Seryozha?”
“I am making sure he takes care of himself! He was on death’s door in Shipunovskaya,Ilyukha!”
“I was not––” Sasha tried to protest.
“He looks perfectly fine this morning.” Ilya winked. “You give him some special medicine?”
Sasha slinked away, back to the bedroom.
“You want details?” Sergey grinned wide. “Happy to provide—”
“You sound like a doting old hen. Like ababushkawho needs a grandchild, not a lover.”
Sergey protested. Ilya guffawed. From the bedroom, Sergey heard drawers open and shut, clothes being put away. The sounds of someone unpacking.
Ilya shoved a report from Anton and Aleksey’s Siberian operations across the table and forced his attention to their most recent updates. The gangs of low-level inmates Ilya had recruited during the insurgency were still working throughout the interior, hunting down the worst of Russia’s high-risk escaped convicts. The drug runners and the thieves had been given commuted sentences, paroled and employed in one swipe of the pen. Siberian bounty hunters now, their job was to round up the murderers, rapists, and terrorists that had been set free when General Moroshkin emptied Siberia’s prisons and gulags during his failed coup.
Most of the escapees had vanished into Russia’s endless wilderness. Crime waves had erupted through the villages and towns that dotted Siberia’s hinterland. Murders were up, and violent crimes. He’d poured extra policemen into the district, but in an oblast the size of the United States, and with more emptiness than people, securing the peace was a difficult task.
