Андрей Воронин – CURSED PRINT RUN (страница 3)

— You are a smart girl, Vera, — the director began, without turning his face to her. His voice had lost its former paternal softness, becoming dry, even, and frighteningly businesslike.

— And your father was a very smart man. Too smart for a simple investigative journalist. That is exactly why I took you on without experience when he disappeared without a trace five years ago.

I thought you had inherited his analytical mind, his ability to see the structure, and not a tendency to cheap mystifications and panic.

Vera flinched at the mention of her father; everything inside clenched from the old pain, but she forced herself to stand straight.

— You knew, — she exhaled, feeling a bitter lump rising to her throat. — You knew from the very beginning that Christian’s books possess this terrible power. You are using him.

Mark Aristarkhovich slowly turned. His well-groomed face no longer wore the mask of a caring mentor; before Vera stood a cynical, hard media magnate who was used to breaking other people’s lives for profit and print runs.

— I know only one thing: Christian brings this publishing house millions — he stated, taking several steps back to his table. — Forty thousand pure pre-orders have already been placed for this novel across the country. The contract with large retail chains and investors is signed. Missing the publication deadlines will destroy “Slovo” in one day. We will go under the hammer. I don’t give a damn about coincidences and your fears, Vera. The presses are working and will keep working. The book will come out exactly in a week, as planned.

— But on the three-hundredth page it is written that I will be killed at the official presentation of the novel! — Vera finally broke into a shout, frantically tearing the watch from her hand and thrusting the wrist forward. — Look at this! This is his handwriting! The ink is coming through right under my skin; it burns!

Mark indifferently slid his gaze over her hand. His pupils widened for a fraction of a second, but he immediately took hold of himself. He didn't even try to touch her wrist, as if he were panicking about getting dirty or catching an unknown disease.

— Listen to me carefully, — the director leaned over the table, resting his palms on the wood, his voice dropped to a sinister, piercing whisper. — Your father, five years ago, also tried to dig under the Order, tried to find out where Christian gets this ink and paper from. And where is he now? Shall I remind you? Do you want to repeat his fate and disappear forever from the lists of the living? You will stay on this project. You will be Christian’s personal lead editor right up to the day of the release. Your task is to control every step of his, every line this psychopath puts on paper. If you go to the police, to journalists, or try to run from the city, I will destroy your reputation and your life so that they will not even take you as a waste paper sorter at the dump. Do you understand me, Vera?

Vera looked at him and, with horror, understood: this man really would not stop. Christian’s magic for him was not a curse or a tragedy, but an ideal fail-safe printing press generating unlimited power and colossal money. On blood, on deaths — he did not care.

— You are free, — Mark Aristarkhovich demonstratively sat back in the chair and took the tablet in his hands, showing that the audience was over. — Tomorrow by two o’clock in the afternoon I expect from you a full report on the intermediate proofreading of the advertising materials for the press. And finally, tidy yourself up. You are the face of our company, not a station beggar.

Vera slowly, almost blindly, put the watch back on her hand, carefully hiding the violet brand, and, with effort, moving her disobedient legs, left the office. In the corridor, she was almost knocked down by the modest, always-stooping chief editor, dragging a huge stack of old archive documents. He slowed down, adjusted the glasses in a cheap frame that had slipped to the side, and looked at Vera with a strange, too-long and attentive gaze.

— Vera, are you all right? — he asked quietly, with some insinuating concern, glancing at her right hand. — You are unusually pale today. You know, the violet shade does not suit you at all. Right now, warmer, living colors are in fashion. Take care of yourself.

Vera was hit by an icy heat from the tips of her fingers to the crown of her head. She stepped back, frantically pressing her right hand to her chest. How does this quiet little man know about the violet color?

— Everything is fine, just a bit dizzy — she threw and almost ran toward the stairs, feeling how the luxurious walls of the old mansion were slowly beginning to squeeze around her, turning into a stone trap.

She no longer had a choice. The world around was collapsing, and the only person who knew the rules of this mad game was the gloomy hermit author. She needed to go to Christian urgently.

CHAPTER 3. HOUSE BY THE BAY

Five days left until the publication of the novel “Ink of Dead Words”. The paper is becoming heavier.

The old suburban bus breathed heavily over the bumps, taking Vera farther and farther from the familiar, understandable Petersburg. Outside the window, grey trunks of coastal pines flashed by, half hidden by the dense milky fog brought from the Baltic. There were almost no passengers: a couple of silent summer residents with empty buckets and a gloomy older man in a greasy storm jacket. Vera sat by the window, pressing a worn leather briefcase with the printed first pages of the manuscript to her knees, and tried to calm the fine trembling in her fingers.

The address she had forced out of Mark Aristarkhovich’s secretary’s database was not marked on any electronic map. It was a dead end in the area of old Komarovo, where century-old trees hid abandoned pre-revolutionary dachas.

The bus stopped at a leaning stop, and Vera stepped out into the damp emptiness that smelled of rotten pine needles and salt. The fog here was so thick that it seemed tangible. It settled on her face in fine drops of moisture, making her shrink from the piercing wind.

She walked along a narrow sandy path, guided only by the dull, measured sound of the surf somewhere ahead. At last, out of the grey veil, the outlines of a massive fence of black bog oak appeared, and behind it — the mansion itself. The house in the northern modern style looked both majestic and frightening. Sharp roof spires rose straight into the low sky, the stone foundation was overgrown with dark-green moss, and the narrow, elongated windows on the first floor were tightly curtained with heavy drapes—no signs of life. The house would have seemed an uninhabited crypt if not for a thin wisp of grey smoke lazily rising from the high brick chimney.

Vera approached the heavy forged gate and pulled the steel ring. A sharp, rusty scrape sounded. She took a deep breath, trying to put back on the mask of a self-confident professional, and walked along the stone path to the porch.

She did not have to knock. The heavy oak door opened by itself; from the depths of the house came a sigh of the parquet boards. Inside, a semi-darkness reigned, diluted only by the weak amber glow of old lamps. A dense, unusual aroma hung in the air: the smell of old archives where rare folios have been stored for centuries: bitter cedar, dried herbs, and a sharp, metallic taste of iodine.

— You are persistent, editor. That is your main virtue and your most dangerous vice— a dull, slightly hoarse voice came from the depth of the spacious hall.

Christian sat in a deep armchair by the huge fireplace, where birch logs lazily crackled. He wore a simple black high-neck sweater that emphasized his sickly pallor and sharp cheekbones. The windows behind his back looked straight out onto the seething Gulf of Finland, and it seemed that the huge grey waves were beating right against the walls of the house.

— Mark Aristarkhovich refused to stop the print run. — Vera walked forward without waiting for an invitation and, with a dull thud, set the briefcase down on the low coffee table. — He threatened me. Said that if I tried to leave, he would destroy me the same way he destroyed my father five years ago.

Christian slowly raised his head. In the semi-darkness, his eyes seemed completely black, without pupils. He cast a glance at her right hand, on which Vera was fidgeting with the strap of the watch.

— Mark is only a trader, — the author smirked cynically, and in his voice sounded the fatigue of a man who had not slept for too long. — He knows how to count only numbers and profit. For him, our lives are expendable material for a beautiful binding. Why did you come here, Vera? I clearly told you at night: leave. Staying away from me is the only way you'll live until Monday.

— You promised that we would find the one who rewrote the ending. — Vera took a step forward; her voice grew stronger; the pragmatism of the philologist demanded answers. — I do not know how to run, Christian. I am used to working with text. If this damned book cannot be stopped, then we must edit it. Change the plot. Cross out the scene of my death.