Free Beating the Babushka by Tim Maleeny Page A

latched the front door and flipped a Closed sign so it faced the street. He looked right and left out the window but the block was quiet, a few parked cars and little traffic.
    Nearly fifty thousand Russian immigrants lived and worked in San Francisco. The ten thousand or so that spoke only Russian at home had clustered in the Richmond and Sunset districts, where they had forged a tight-knit community. A surprising number worked in the medical industry as doctors, orderlies, nurses, and in medical supply stores. Though Soviet healthcare had eroded along with the rest of the country’s infrastructure, the system had been large enough to have employed a great many men and women, training them sufficiently to get a decent job in the United States.
    Most families were either Jewish or Russian Orthodox, both religions having flourished in exile and survived underground during the Soviet era. They had faith and a work ethic that would put the Puritans to shame. The Major had neither.
    He’d come to the store earlier in the day and told the owner he was going to borrow it.
    The owner was in his late fifties and had a family, but when he was younger and working in a Moscow factory, he had known men like the Major. Men who pretended to be your co-workers but were really KGB, men who smiled to your face but lied behind your back. Men with dead eyes who took pleasure in pain. The store owner left without a word, leaving the front door open and the keys behind.
    Ursa shuffled through the orthopedic maze, the man with the box in tow. When they reached the back room, the man squinted through a haze of smoke at the Major, who was smoking an unfiltered cigarette, flicking the ash onto a cracked tile floor directly below a no-smoking sign. The squint didn’t do anything to change the man’s expression, which seemed to be a permanent scowl. He had large black eyes set too deep for his narrow face and small mouth, sinking beneath a wave of black hair that hung over his eyebrows and past his collar. His crooked teeth flashed in a feral smile as he greeted the Major.
    “I am Marik.”
    The Major didn’t respond, just gestured toward a folding card table against the back wall, which Ursa had cleared earlier with one sweep of his arm. Manila folders and stacks of paper were strewn across the floor.
    “Show me,” said the Major.
    Before carrying the long box over to the table, Marik glanced over at Ursa. The giant had moved behind him and was leaning against the door, watching him with open disdain. Ursa didn’t know Marik but didn’t let that get in the way of his contempt. Marik was a little man acting the tough guy, a soldier in the mafiya looking to earn his stripes. Ursa knew men like Marik in Russia and they were all weak, selling their souls and betraying their comrades for a little cash or out of fear of the gulag. Ursa had never broken, but after years behind bars, he’d seen almost everyone crack. He realized the only man with a will to match his own was the Major, the man who had caught him, tortured him, and sent him to the gulag. Ursa could respect his enemies but not his friends. He stared until Marik broke eye contact and returned his attention to the Major and opened the box.
    The rifle was almost four feet long, half the length taken up by a barrel that protruded from a worn, wooden stock like a bayonet. A short magazine extended from the square receiver just below the trigger, a capacity of five rounds. A short telescopic sight sat on top, a military mount with tapered edges. The shoulder stock looked skeletal, with sections carved out to reduce weight. The gun looked deadly just sitting in the box.
    “Just as you ordered,” said Marik, unconsciously rubbing his hands together.
    The Major picked up the rifle with his left hand and stroked the length of the barrel with his right, his eyes following every contour with a look that bordered on lust. There was a long, uncomfortable minute before he set the rifle down and