New Watch Read online

  Dedication

  For my parents

  Epigraph

  This is a dubious text for the cause of Light.

  —THE NIGHT WATCH

  This is a dubious text for the cause of Darkness.

  —THE DAY WATCH

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One - Dubious Intent

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two - Dubious Times

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Three - Dubious Doings

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  About the Author

  Also by Sergei Lukyanenko

  Back Ad

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part One

  Dubious Intent

  Prologue

  SENIOR SERGEANT DMITRY PASTUKHOV WAS A GOOD POLIZEI.

  Of course, for the purpose of enlightening drunks who got a bit above themselves he sometimes employed measures not actually prescribed by the regulations—a few good smacks in the teeth or well-aimed kicks, for instance. But only in cases where the dipso concerned was getting a bit too pushy about his rights, or refusing to proceed to the drunk tank. And Dima wouldn’t actually spurn a five-hundred note shaken out of some lunk from Ukraine or Central Asia who didn’t have a residence permit—after all, what with police pay being so low, the offenders might just as well pay him their fines directly. Nor did he raise any objections when he was poured a shot of cognac instead of a glass of water in eating joints on the territory under his purview.

  After all, it was a demanding job. It was dangerous and difficult. And at first glance people hardly even seemed to notice it. There had to be some material incentives.

  But, on the other hand, Dima had never beaten money out of prostitutes and pimps. On principle. Something in the way he’d been raised wouldn’t let him do it. Dima didn’t waste time dragging slightly tipsy citizens off to the sobering-up station while they still retained a glimmer of reason. And when he uncovered a real crime he launched himself into pursuit of the perpetrators like a shot. He always searched conscientiously for clues and submitted reports on instances of petty theft (that was, if the victims insisted on it, of course) and he made an effort to remember the faces of persons on the “wanted” list. He had several significant arrests under his belt, including a genuine murderer—a man who had first stabbed his wife’s lover (which was forgivable) and then his wife (which was understandable) and then, still brandishing the knife, had gone after the neighbor who had informed him about his wife’s infidelity. Outraged at such black ingratitude, the neighbor had locked himself in his apartment and called the police on 02. Arriving in response to the summons, Dima Pastukhov had first detained the murderer, who was pounding impotently on the iron door with his blood-smeared, puny little intellectual’s fists, and then struggled for a long time with his own desire to drag the whistle-blowing neighbor out onto the stairs and rearrange his face.

  So Dima regarded himself as a good policeman—which wasn’t really all that far from the truth. Compared with the example set by some of his colleagues, he stood out, seeming every bit as diligent as the militiaman Svistulkin in that old Soviet children’s favorite Dunno in Sunshine City.

  The only blot on Dima’s service record dated back to January 1998: still young and green then, he had been on patrol in the Exhibition of Economic Achievements district with Sergeant Kaminsky, who was by way of being the young militiaman’s mentor. (They were still called “militiamen,” or simply “cops,” back then: the fashionable word “policeman” and the slightly offensive term polizei hadn’t come into use yet.) Kaminsky was very proud to be playing this role, but his admonitions and advice all basically came down to where and how you could pick up a bit of easy money. On that particular evening, when Kaminsky spotted this half-cut young guy (he even had an open quarter-liter of vodka in his hand) dashing out of the metro station towards the pedestrian underpass, he whistled in delight and the two partners moved in to intercept their prey. All the indications were that this drunk was about to part with a fifty note, or maybe even a hundred.

  And then everything went pear-shaped. It was some kind of black-magic voodoo. The tipsy suspect fixed the two partners with a surprisingly sober stare (that stare was sober all right, but there was something savage and chilling about it, like the look in the eyes of a stray dog that had lost all faith in people a very long time ago) and advised the militiamen to get drunk themselves.

  And they did as he said. They walked over to the trading kiosks (Yeltsin’s chaotic reign was already in its final years, but vodka was still sold openly in the street) and, giggling like lunatics, they each bought a bottle exactly like the one carried by the drunk who had given them such sound advice. Then they bought another two. And another two.

  Three hours later Pastukhov and Kaminsky, feeling very witty and merry at this stage, were picked up by one of their own patrols—and that was what saved them. They caught it in the neck, all right, but they weren’t flung out of the militia. After that Kaminsky gave up drinking altogether and swore blind that the drunk they’d met must have been a hypnotist or even some kind of psychic. Pastukhov himself didn’t slander the man pointlessly or indulge in idle speculation. But he clung very tightly to the memory of him . . . with the sole intention of making sure he never crossed his path again.

  Perhaps it was the powerful memory of that shameful binge, or perhaps Pastukhov had simply developed some unusual abilities, but after a while he started noticing other people with strange eyes. To himself Pastukhov called these people “wolves” and “dogs.”

  The first group had the calm indifference of the predator in their gaze: not malicious, no, the wolf harries the sheep without malice—more likely, in fact, with love. Pastukhov simply steered clear of their kind, trying hard not to attract any attention in the process.

  The second group, who were more like that first young drunk, had a dog-like look in their eyes. Sometimes guilty, sometimes patient and concerned, sometimes sad. There was just one thing that bothered Pastukhov: that wasn’t the way dogs looked at their masters, at best it was the way they looked at a master’s whelp. And so Pastukhov tried to steer clear of them too.

  And for quite a long time he managed it.

  If children are life’s flowers, then this child was a blooming cactus.

  He started yelling the moment the doors of the Sheremetyevo-D terminal slid open and he came in. His mother, red-faced with anger and shame (the shouting was obviously a repeat performance), was dragging him along by the hand, but the boy was leaning backwards, bracing himself with both feet, and howling: “I won’t! I won’t! I won’t fly! Mummy, don’t! The plane’s going to crash!”

  His mother let go of his hand and the boy slumped to the floor and stayed sitting there: a fat, hysterical, tear-stained, unattractive child, dressed a little bit too lightly for the Moscow weather in June—there was obviously a flight to warmer climes in prospect.

  A man sitting at a cafe table about twenty meters away from them got up, almost knocking over his unfinished mug of beer. He looked for a few moments at the boy and the mother
who was trying to din something into her son’s head. Then he sat down and said in a quiet voice: “That’s appalling. What a nightmare!”

  “I think so, too,” agreed the young woman sitting opposite him. She put down her cup of coffee and gave the boy a hostile look. “I’d call it sordid.”

  “Well, I don’t see anything sordid about it,” the man said gently. “But it’s certainly appalling . . . no doubt about that . . .”

  “I personally—” the young woman began, but stopped when she saw the man wasn’t listening.

  He took out a phone. Dialed a number. Spoke in a quiet voice: “I need a level-one clearance. One or two. No, I’m not joking. Try to find one . . .”

  He broke off the call, looked at the young woman, and nodded. “I’m sorry, an urgent call . . . What were you saying?”

  “I personally am child-free,” the young woman declared defiantly.

  “Free of children? Are you infertile, then?”

  The young woman shook her head. “A common misapprehension. We child-free women are opposed to children because they enslave us. We have to choose—between being a proud, free individual or a social appendage to the population’s reproductive mechanism!”

  “Ah,” the man said, with a nod. “And I thought . . . you had health problems. I was going to recommend a good doctor . . . But you do accept sex, though?”

  The young woman smiled. “Naturally! We’re not asexual, are we? Sex and marriage—that’s all very good and normal. It’s just . . . tying yourself to those creatures that are always yelling and running around and—”

  “And pooping,” the man suggested. “They’re always pooping as well, aren’t they? And they can’t even wipe their own backsides at first.”

  “Pooping!” the young woman agreed. “That’s it precisely! Spending the best years of your life serving the needs of undeveloped human juveniles . . . I hope you’re not going to lecture me on morals and try to persuade me to change my mind and have a huge brood of kiddies.”

  “No, I’m not. I believe you. I’m quite certain you’ll remain childless to the end of your life.”

  The boy and his mother walked past: the child was slightly calmer now or, more likely, he had simply resigned himself to the fact that the flight was going to happen. The mother was speaking to her son in a low voice—they heard something about a warm sea, a good hotel and bullfights.

  “Oh God!” the young woman exclaimed. “They’re flying to Spain . . . It looks like we’re on the same flight. Can you imagine it, listening to that little tub of lard’s hysterical squealing for three hours?”

  “Not three, I think,” said the man. “One hour and ten or fifteen minutes . . .”

  A slightly scornful expression appeared on the young woman’s face. The man appeared perfectly capable and competent. But then how could he not know the most ordinary things . . . “The flight to Barcelona lasts three hours.”

  “Three hours and twenty minutes. But suppose—”

  “So where are you flying to?” asked the young woman, rapidly losing interest in him.

  “Nowhere. I was seeing off a friend. Then I sat down to drink a mug of beer.”

  The girl hesitated. “Tamara. My name’s Tamara.”

  “I’m Anton.”

  “You probably don’t have children, do you, Anton?” asked Tamara, still unwilling to abandon her favorite subject.

  “Why do you think that? I have a daughter. Nadenka. The same age as that . . . tub of lard.”

  “So you didn’t want to let your wife remain a free, healthy woman?” Tamara laughed. “What does she do?”

  “My wife?”

  “Well, not your daughter . . .”

  “By training, she’s a doctor. But in herself . . . she’s an enchantress.”

  “That’s just what I dislike so much about you men,” Tamara declared, getting up, “that vulgar affectation. ‘An enchantress’! And no doubt you’re quite happy for her to slave away at the cooker, wash the nappies, get no sleep for nights on end . . .”

  “I am, although no one washes nappies anymore—disposables have been in fashion for a long time.”

  At that the young woman’s face contorted as if she had been offered a handful of cockroaches to eat. She grabbed her handbag and walked over to the check-in desk without even saying goodbye.

  The man shrugged. He picked up his phone and raised it to his ear—and it rang immediately.

  “Gorodetsky . . . Completely? No, third-level won’t do at all. A full charter flight to Barcelona. You can accept it as second-level . . . Can’t you?”

  He paused for a while, then said: “Then one seventh-level for me. No, that’s wrong. The boy has a First- or Second-Level gift of clairvoyance. The Dark Ones will dig their heels in . . . A single fifth-level intervention—a change in the fate of one human and one Other . . . All right, put it down to me.”

  He stood up, leaving his unfinished mug of beer on the table, and set off towards the check-in desk, where the fat boy was standing in the queue beside his mother with a stony look on his face, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

  The man walked straight past the checkpoint (for some reason no one even tried to stop him) and approached the woman. He cleared his throat politely. Caught her eye. Nodded.

  “Olga Yurievna . . . You forgot to turn off the iron when you were ironing Kesha’s shorts this morning . . .”

  A look of panic appeared on the woman’s face.

  “You can fly on the evening charter,” the man continued. “But right now you’d better go home.”

  The woman tugged at her son’s hand and then went dashing towards the exit. But the boy, whom she suddenly seemed to have forgotten completely, gazed at the man wide-eyed.

  “You want to ask who I am and why your mum believed me?” the man asked.

  The boy’s eyes misted over as if he were looking inside himself, or at something far, far away on the outside—something in a place where well-brought-up children weren’t supposed to look (and where badly-brought-up adults shouldn’t look either, unless they really had to).

  “You are Anton Gorodetsky, Higher White Magician,” said the boy. “You are Nadka’s father. Because of you . . . all of us . . .”

  “Well?” the man asked keenly “Well, well?”

  “Kesha!” the woman howled, suddenly remembering her son. The boy shuddered and the mist in his eyes dispersed. He said: “Only I don’t know what all that means . . . Thank you!”

  “Because of me . . . all of you . . .” the man murmured pensively, watching as the woman and her child rushed along the glass wall of the terminal building towards the taxi rank. “Because of me . . . all of you will live lives of luxury . . . All of you are doomed. All of you have been bankrupted . . . All of you are, will, have been—what?”

  He swung round and walked unhurriedly towards the exit. By the entrance to the “green corridor” he stopped and looked back at the queue that had formed at the check-in desk for Barcelona. It was a large, noisy queue. People going away for a holiday at the seaside. There were lots of women and children in it, lots of men and even one child-free young woman.

  “God help you,” said the man. “I can’t.”

  Dima Pastukhov had just taken out his lighter to give his partner Bisat Iskenderov a light, even though Bisat had his own lighter—it was simply a routine they’d got into. If Dima took out a cigarette, Bisat reached for his lighter. When the Azerbaijani decided to smoke, Dima offered him a light. If Pastukhov had been inclined to intellectual reflection, he might have said this was their way of demonstrating their mutual respect for each other, despite their differences of opinion on many things—from problems of nationality to which car was classier: the Mercedes ML or the BMW X3.

  But Dima wasn’t inclined to reflections of this kind—he and Bisat both drove Fords, preferred German beer to Russian vodka or Azerbaijani cognac, and had quite friendly feelings for each other. So Dima clicked on the button, summoning up the little t
ongue of flame, glanced briefly at the exit from the airport terminal building—and dropped the lighter just as his friend’s cigarette was reaching for it.

  There was a “dog” walking out through the doors of the departure lounge. A middle-aged man who didn’t look frightening at all—quite cultured, in fact. Pastukhov was used to seeing people like this, but this one wasn’t simply a “dog,” he was the “dog” . . . from the Exhibition of Economic Achievements district, from way back in the distant past. Only he didn’t look drunk now, more as if he had a bit of a hangover.

  Pastukhov turned away and started slowly groping for the lighter on the ground. The man with watchdog’s eyes walked past without taking the slightest notice of him.

  “A drop too much yesterday?” Bisat asked sympathetically.

  “Who?” muttered Pastukhov. “Ah . . . no, it’s just that the lighter’s slippery . . .”

  “Your hands are shaking and you’ve turned as white as a sheet,” his partner remarked.

  Pastukhov finally gave him a light, checked out of the corner of his eye that the man was walking away towards the car park, took out a cigarette, and lit up himself—without waiting for Bisat’s lighter.

  “You’re acting kind of funny . . .” said Bisat.

  “Yes, I was drinking yesterday,” Pastukhov muttered. He looked at the terminal building again.

  This time there was a “wolf” coming out of it. With a self-confident, predatory gaze and determined stride. Pastukhov turned away.

  “You should eat khash the morning after,” Bisat admonished him. “But only the right khash—ours. That Armenian khash is poison!”

  “Ah, come on, they’re absolutely identical,” Pastukhov replied in his usual manner.

  Bisat spat disdainfully and shook his head.

  “They may look the same. But in essence they’re completely different!”

  “They might be different in essence, but in reality they’re absolutely identical!” Dima replied, watching the “wolf,” who had walked past and was also going towards the car park.