Bruce Sterling - The Littlest Jackal

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THE LITTLEST JACKAL

by BRUCE STERLING

[from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction No. 538, March 1996]

[VERSION 1.1 (Jan 28 02). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version number

by 0.1 and redistribute.]

When Bruce Sterling called me last year to say he could no longer do a science column 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.) When it became clear that I could not change his mind, I asked that he send

us an occasional 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 once been a KGB

liaison officer to the air force of the Afghan government. Like many Afghan War veterans, Khoklov had

gone into organized crime since the Soviet crackup.

Starlitz examined the Sibelius CD's print-job and plastic hinges with a dealer's professional 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 the rack. The outdoor market table was nicely set with cunningly

targeted tourist-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 with bourgeois 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 with umlauts. "This is Finland, ace. It's European

Union."

Khoklov was kitted-out to the nines in a three-piece linen suit and a snappy straw boater. Life in the

New Russia had been very good to Khoklov. "At least Finland'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 summer frock and icily

shoes. Starlitz tried on a pair of shades from a revolving stand. He gazed experimentally about the

marketplace. Potatoes. Dill. Carrots and onions. Buckets of strawberries. Flowers and flags. Orange

fabric canopies over wooden market tables run by Turks and gypsies. People were selling salmon

straight from the decks of funky little fishing boats.

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

pack.

One of Khoklov's two bodyguards appeared at once, alertly flicking a Zippo. "No proper sense of

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culture," insisted Khoklov, breathing smoke and coughing richly. The guard tucked the lighter into his

Chicago Bulls jacket and padded off silently on his spotless Adidas.

Starlitz, who was trying to quit, hummed a smoke from Khoklov, which he was forced to light for

himself. Then he paid for the shades, peeling a salmon-colored fifty from a dense wad of Finnish marks.

Khoklov paused nostalgically by the Czarina's Obelisk, a bellicose monument festooned with

Romanov aristo-fetish gear in cast bronze. Khoklov, whose politics shaded toward Pamyat rightism with

a mystical pan-Slavic spin, patted the 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 cellar in 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 that building from a

passing boat?"

"You mean me personally? Forget it."

"I mean someone in a hired speedboat with a shoulder-launched surplus Red Army panzerfaust.

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 a couple of months."

Khoklov, tripped up in the midst of his reverie, frowned. "No matter. You weren't the agent I had in

mind in any case."

They wandered on. A Finn at a nearby table was selling big swollen muskrat-fur hats. No sane local

would buy these items, for they were the exact sort of pseudo-authentic cultural relics that appeared only

in tourist economies. The Finn, however, was flourishing. He was deftly slotting and whipping the

Mastercards and Visas of sunburnt Danes and Germans through a handheld cellular credit checker.

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

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

Khoklov sidled along, flicking the smoldering butt of his Dunhill onto the gray stone cobbles. "I've

never met him myself. My boss knew him in the seventies. 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 Carlos the 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 Red Brigades. 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 sighed wistfully. "American Weather Underground -- how I

wanted to meet a groovy hippie revolutionary from Weather Underground! But even when they were

blowing up the Bank 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 always very charming. It's

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how they survive."

"I like surviving" Starlitz said thoughtfully.

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

Raf the Jackal arrived from across the Baltic in a sealed Fiat. It was a yellow two-door with Danish

plates. His driver was a Finnish girl, maybe twenty. Her dyed-black hair was braided with long green

extensions of tattered yam. She wore a red blouse, cut-off jeans and striped cotton stockings.

Starlitz climbed into the passenger seat, slammed the door, and smiled. The girl was sweating with

heat, fear, and nervous tension. She had a battery of ear-piercings. A tattooed wolf's-head was stenciled

up her clavicle and nosing at the base of her neck.

Starlitz twisted and looked behind him. The urban guerrilla was scrunched into the 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 in his 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 at the safehouse."

She shot him a quick sideways glance of kohllined eyes. "You found a good safehouse?"

"Sure, the place should do," said Starlitz. He was pleased that her English was so good. After four

years tending bar in Roppongi, the prospect of switching Japanese 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't inform 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 operations coincide -- 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 the guy's deep sense of

peace. It was hard to tell through the Ray-Bans, but the smear of sweat on his balding forehead gave Raf

a look of unfeigned ease.

Starlitz pondered the girl's latest remark. He had no idea why a college-age female Finn would claim

to be commanding a 51-year-old veteran urban guerrilla.

"Why do you say that?" he said at last. This was usually a safe and useful question.

The girl glanced in the rear-view. They were passing a sunstruck green park, with bronze statues of

swaggering Finnish poets and mood-stricken Finnish dramatists. She took a comer with a squeak of

tires. "Since you need a name, call me Aino."

"Okay. I'm Leggy.... Or Lekhi.... Or Keggae." He'd been getting a lot of "Reggae" lately. "The

safehouse is in Ypsallina. You know that neighborhood?" Starlitz plucked a laminated tourist map from

his shirt pocket. "Take Mannerheimintie up past the railway station."

"You're not Russian," Aino concluded.

"Nyet."

"Are you Organizatsiya?"

"I forget what you have to do to officially join the Russian mafia, but basically, no."

"Why are you involved in the Ålands operation? You don't look political."

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