bruce Sterling - The Littlest Jackal

When Bruce Sterling called me last year to say he could no longer do a sciencecolumn on a regular basis, I begged him to continue. I pleaded with him.(Remember, we mentioned the art of editorial begging in a previous issue.) Whenit became clear that I could not change his mind, I asked that he send us anoccasional short story.

"The Littlest Jackal" is not an occasional short story. It is a strong novella,bringing Bruce's continuing character, Leggy Starlitz, back to our pages.

I hate sibelius," said the Russian mafioso.

"It's that Finnish nationalist thing," said Leggy Starlitz.

"That's why I hate Sibelius." The Russian's name was Pulat R. Khoklov. He'd oncebeen a KGB liaison officer to the air force of the Afghan government. Like manyAfghan War veterans, Khoklov had gone into organized crime since the Sovietcrackup.

Starlitz examined the Sibelius CD's print-job and plastic hinges with a dealer'sprofessional eye. "Europeans sure pretend to like this classic stuff," he said."Almost like pop, but it can't move real product." He placed the CD back in therack. The outdoor market table was nicely set with cunningly targetedtourist-bait. Starlitz glanced over the glass earrings and the wooden jewelry,then closely examined a set of lewd postcards.

"This isn't 'Europe,'" Khoklov sniffed. "This is a Czarist Grand Duchy withbourgeois pretensions."

Starlitz fingered a poly-cotton souvenir jersey with comical red-nosed reindeer.It bore an elaborate legend in the Finno-Ugric tongue, a language infested withumlauts. "This is Finland, ace. It's European Union."

Khoklov was kitted-out to the nines in a three-piece linen suit and a snappystraw boater. Life in the New Russia had been very good to Khoklov. "At leastFinland's not NATO."

"Look, fuckin' Poland is NATO now. Get over it."

They moved on to another table, manned by a comely Finn in a flowered summerfrock and icily shoes. Starlitz tried on a pair of shades from a revolvingstand. He gazed experimentally about the marketplace. Potatoes. Dill. Carrotsand onions. Buckets of strawberries. Flowers and flags. Orange fabric canopiesover wooden market tables run by Turks and gypsies. People were selling salmonstraight from the decks of funky little fishing boats.

Khoklov sighed. "Lekhi, you have no historical perspective." He plucked aDunhill from a square red pack.

One of Khoklov's two bodyguards appeared at once, alertly flicking a Zippo. "Noproper sense of culture," insisted Khoklov, breathing smoke and coughing richly.The guard tucked the lighter into his Chicago Bulls jacket and padded offsilently on his spotless Adidas.

Starlitz, who was trying to quit, hummed a smoke from Khoklov, which he wasforced to light for himself. Then he paid for the shades, peeling asalmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks.

Khoklov paused nostalgically by the Czarina's Obelisk, a bellicose monumentfestooned with Romanov aristo-fetish gear in cast bronze. Khoklov, whosepolitics shaded toward Pamyat rightism with a mystical pan-Slavic spin, pattedthe granite base of the Obelisk with open pleasure.

Then he gazed across the Esplanadi. "Helsinki city hall?"

Starlitz adjusted his shades. When arranging his end of the deal from a cellarin Tokyo, he hadn't quite gathered that Finland would be so relentlessly bright."That's the city hall all right."

Khoklov turned to examine the sun-spattered Baltic. "Think you could hit thatbuilding from a passing boat?"

"You mean me personally? Forget it."

"I mean someone in a hired speedboat with a shoulder-launched surplus Red Armypanzerfaust. Generically speaking."

"Anything's possible nowadays."

"At night," urged Khoklov. "A pre-dawn urban commando raid! Cleverly planned.Precisely executed. Ruthless operational accuracy!"

"This is summer in Finland," said Starlitz. "The sun's not gonna set here for acouple of months."

Khoklov, tripped up in the midst of his reverie, frowned. "No matter. Youweren't the agent I had in mind in any case."

They wandered on. A Finn at a nearby table was selling big swollen muskrat-furhats. No sane local would buy these items, for they were the exact sort ofpseudo-authentic cultural relics that appeared only in tourist economies. TheFinn, however, was flourishing. He was deftly slotting and whipping theMastercards and Visas of sunburnt Danes and Germans through a handheld cellularcredit checker.

"Our man arrives tomorrow morning on the Copenhagenferry," Khoklov announced.

"You ever met this character before?" Starlitz said. "Ever done any realbusiness with him?"

Khoklov sidled along, flicking the smoldering butt of his Dunhill onto the graystone cobbles. "I've never met him myself. My boss knew him in the seventiess.My boss used to run him from the KGB HQ in East Berlin. They called him Raf,back then. Raf the Jackal."

Starlitz scratched his close-cropped, pumpkin-like head. "I've heard of Carlosthe Jackal."

"No, no," Khoklov said, pained. "Carlos retired, he's in Khartoum. This is Raf.A different man entirely."

"Where's he from?"

"Argentina. Or Italy. He once ran arms between the Tupamaros and the RedBrigades. We think he was an Italian Argentine originally."

"KGB recruited him and you didn't even know his nationality?" Khoklov frowned."We never recruited him! KGB never had to recruit any of those Seventies people!Baader-Meinhoff, Palestinians... They always came straight to us!" He sighedwistfully. "American Weather Underground --how I wanted to meet a groovy hippierevolutionary from Weather Underground! But even when they were blowing up theBank of America the Yankees would never talk to real communists."

"The old boy must be getting on in years."

"No no. He's very much alive, and very charming. The truly dangerous are alwaysvery charming. It's how they survive."

"I like surviving" Starlitz said thoughtfully.

"Then you can learn a few much-needed lessons in charm, Lekhi. Since you're ourliaison."

Raf the Jackal arrived from across the Baltic in a sealed Fiat. It was a yellowtwo-door with Danish plates. His driver was a Finnish girl, maybe twenty. Herdyed-black hair was braided with long green extensions of tattered yam. She worea red blouse, cut-off jeans and striped cotton stockings.

Starlitz climbed into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and smiled. The girlwas sweating with heat, fear, and nervous tension. She had a battery ofear-piercings. A tattooed wolf's-head was stenciled up her clavicle and nosingat the base of her neck.

Starlitz twisted and looked behind him. The urban guerrilla was scrunched intothe Fiat's back seat, asleep, doped, or dead. Raf wore a denim jacket,relaxed-fit Levis and Ray-Bans. He'd taken his sneakers off and was sleeping inhis rumpled mustard-yellow socks.

"How's the old man?" Starlitz said, adjusting his seat belt.

"Ferries make him seasick." The girl headed up the Esplanade. "We'll wake him atthe safe-house." She shot him a quick sideways glance of kohllined eyes. "Youfound a good safe-house?"

"Sure, the place should do," said Starlitz. He was pleased that her English wasso good. After four years tending bar in Roppongi, the prospect of switchingJapanese for Finnish was dreadful. "What do they call you?"

"What did they tell you to call me?"

"Got no instructions on that."

The girl's pale knuckles whitened on the Fiat's steering-wheel. "They didn'tinform you of my role in this operation?"

"Why would they wanna do that?"

"Raf is our agent now," the girl said. "He's not your agent. Our operationscoincide -- but only because our interests coincide. Raf belongs to my movement.He doesn't belong to any kind of Russians."

Starlitz twisted in his seat to stare at the slumbering terrorist. He envied theguy's deep sense of peace. It was hard to tell through the Ray-Bans, but thesmear of sweat on his balding forehead gave Raf a look of unfeigned ease.