Dusk in Kalevia: Chapter 12

They had checked all the lobbies, restrooms, and opera boxes, and Toivo was growing dismayed. Had they missed their one and vital chance? Was Vesa already…?

“There!” Kaija pointed down the hallway. There Vesa stood, staring at a doorway with a conflicted expression on his face.

Demyan arrested Mika’s flight by grabbing the arm of his jacket. “Go report to the guard,” Demyan ordered. “Tell them there’s a situation. Whatever happens, keep it quiet–last thing we need now is a panic.”

Mika nodded brusquely. Toivo knew that despite his sober expression, his stomach was tying itself in knots at the idea of suddenly appearing among the ranks of men he’d been so recently exiled from.

It’s okay, Toivo reassured him silently.

They trusted him. They always had–his good-natured loyalty had earned him their respect back when they’d all been cadets together. They’d understand.

“Say it’s a matter of State Security and that Chernyshev sent you. They’d better listen.” Demyan gave him a blistering stare. Mika obeyed, and Toivo and Demyan rushed to overtake Kaija as she barreled down the hall on a wounded leg.

“Vesa!” Demyan shouted.

Toivo wasn’t sure if it was because Vesa recognized them or because he didn’t, but in the split second after he turned to them, he flashed the sort of agitation usually reserved for vicious strays and vanished through the door.

They hurried up the narrow switchbacks of the stairwell to follow. Toivo could hear the boy ahead of them, running sloppily and panicked–as the girl had done that morning.

“Vesa, wait!” Demyan shouted up the remaining flight of stairs. A door slammed, and then silence.

“Perkele. Don’t know why he…”

“Shh.” Toivo grabbed the back of Demyan’s jacket as he became aware of the forces that resonated around them. It was only perceptible in the silence, like the rushing of blood in his ears.

“Feel that?”

It was a foolish question. It sank down through the stairwell–shock, terror, and disbelief, interlaced with the violent elation of a man who felt his fingers close around the throat of victory.

“Kuoppala.” Toivo watched the muscles of Demyan’s jaw tighten as he looked upward toward the door.

Kaija stared at them in confusion, but said nothing; she nodded when Toivo held a finger to his lips.

“Get behind me,” Toivo told her. “We’re going in.”

They took the last few stairs slowly, stifling their footsteps. Demyan drew his Makarov from the holster under his arm, Toivo gripped the Nagant seven-shot that Demyan had given him following his ersatz “enlistment” with the corps. Toivo found himself once again clutching an unfamiliar gun in his hand, but only now, at the pinnacle of this madness, did its possession give him any sort of security.

Demyan signaled to Toivo with a sharp flick of his hand. He drew a breath, held it, and kicked in the door.

The first thing Toivo saw was Vesa’s back–the boy stood frozen like a statue, palms raised in a gesture of mute surrender. Kuoppala was standing at the other side of the circular tower, backlit by the last dying rays of the afternoon.

The gun in his hand was elongated by the round barrel of a silencer, and it was pointed straight at Vesa’s chest.

“Chernyshev,” Kuoppala said without surprise, his voice tinged with facetious regret. “Always the meddler.”

“Drop the gun.” Demyan’s steady hands trained the gun on the Minister of State Security.

“You’re not giving the orders today.”

Demyan took a step forward, and Kuoppala laughed–a sickly, hollow bark that could barely fit the definition.

“Stop right there, unless you want the kid to end up like him.”

Toivo suddenly noticed the body of the turncoat rebel. Taisto was a limp bundle sprawled face-first on the floor near the wall; a thin trickle of blood wended its way across the uneven floorboards.

“And you think you’re going to get away with this?” asked Demyan, shaking his head as mockery crept into his tone. He took another step. “The guard is on its way, just drop–”

“Stop!”

Kaija’s voice was sharp, and even Kuoppala froze, as though he had given no heed to the two guards flanking his enemy. She gestured abruptly. “He made that a bomb.”

A large, domed electric lantern sat on a low pedestal in the middle of the floor. When the sun set, the symbolic beacon would come alive, burning with a voltaic flame above Vainola. In the long afternoon shadows, Toivo hadn’t seen the brown packet, bristling like a centipede with its loops of wire taped under the central well of the light.

He felt as though all the air had gone from the room, Demyan’s shock echoing his own.

From the floor below, a muffled roar of applause seeped through the high ceilings of the auditorium, up through the floor at their feet.

“We’re not his target,” Kaija went on, her eyes darting downward. “They are.”

Suddenly, Toivo could see it clearly; the ruined tower crashing down, tons of stone and steel caving in the auditorium ceiling as hundreds of horrified faces turned upward in the brief instant before oblivion.

Kuoppala was staring at Kaija, and for the first time, Toivo saw something akin to fear cross his face. As though in response to this unexpected reaction, Vesa chanced a glimpse over his shoulder.

“Kaija.” Vesa’s voice was strangled.

“Impossible. I saw you…” Kuoppala, too, seemed to struggle to get his words out.

“What?” asked Demyan, recovering some of his usual menacing poise. “What did you see? A man shot in his car, a rebel wounded in the storm, a prisoner vanishing from his cell?” He began to advance once more. “Kuoppala, give me the gun.”

“What are you?”

“What indeed?” Demyan grinned, and even Toivo flinched at the thorns within that smile.

Demyan was working on Kuoppala in earnest now, spreading his wings, growing throughout the room unseen. The wall was cracking–dark, invisible ivy pushed its way through crumbling brick. He took another step forward. “Drop it, Kuoppala.”

“I warned you,” Kuoppala snapped, his voice was tinged with panic. He swung the long barrel of his pistol toward Vesa.

Toivo dove.

As he threw himself into the boy’s side, he heard a crack, felt a molten wet sizzle across his cheek and ear as he crushed Vesa into the floor. There was another snap of suppressed fire and a curse from Kuoppala as the shot went wide, piercing the crown of the military cap that had tumbled from Toivo’s head mere centimeters from where they lay.

Good, thought Toivo. Better he wastes the rounds on someone he can’t kill. He stood up and made a show of brushing himself off, feeling the itching ache as his skin began to crawl back together–and this time, he made no effort to hide it. Toivo almost felt sorry for the way Kuoppala’s hands had begun to tremble. Almost.

“You were saying?”

Kuoppala fired again, too slow. Toivo took off along the curve of the windows; panes of glass shattered behind him by wayward bullets, concussions echoing around him. Six, seven… Kuoppala would be out soon, unless…

The man had stopped firing. Toivo shook glass from his hair and whipped around to face him.

“One more.” Kuoppala laughed, looking at his gun with a lopsided smile. His eyes trailed across the room.

“Time to play. Who will it be?”

Toivo went cold. He dashed back toward the teenagers; Kaija pulled Vesa behind her, thrusting herself protectively between him and Kuoppala’s last potential shot. Demyan snarled and stepped toward the two from their other side, his gun still aimed at Kuoppala’s heart.

“Shoot and you’re dead,” Demyan growled.

“Ah, we have a winner.” Kuoppala lowered his weapon.

And pointed at the beacon light where the bomb waited for a spark.

To be concluded in Chapter 13 + Epilogue.

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