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The dog has beady, button eyes, large and dark, glinting in the glow of the Christmas lights strung through the street and in the window of the shop. It’s sat at head height, lying down, paws flopped out in front of it and lolling, floppy ears over the top in a darker brown than its body, squished between a red helicopter toy that’s far more eyecatching and a trio of fashionable plastic dolls.
Yassen doesn’t know what drew his eyes to it. It’s a brown dog slightly off centre of a colourful, busy window display. It’s only five o’clock, but the wintertime has turned the cold, Russian street already to night and there are just as many things to see on the street at the cheerful market stalls as there are in toy shop windows. Not least because Yassen doesn’t have a use for toys. Even Alex, whom he might have bought one for once, is long grown out of them.
Maybe it’s the helicopter. It’s red and sleek and perfectly crafted, its detail well-formed and correct, even inside the cockpit, only visible up close. The rotary blades, also painted red, are sharp and neat and powerful looking, and a remote control console is sat propped up beside it in a way that makes the helicopter-loving kid inside Yassen very, very envious indeed. He still loves helicopters, even now, even after all the mystery is gone; after at least a thousand hours in the air, the draw is still there.
But, in the end, it’s only another remote controlled helicopter. He’s seen them before and he’ll see them again. Perhaps there’s one in every toy shop window in Russia.
The dog, on the other hand…
Yassen’s distracted. Truly distracted, for the first time in a long while. The dog’s eyes gaze back at him, mournfully, its mouth stitched into a hopeful double-u of wool, and its eyes are almost alive in the twinkling of the Christmas lights. It looks as soft as Yassen remembers it, before he stroked his own worn, before he slept with it too many nights, nuzzled into it for comfort with a baby blanket hooked in his index finger and a small thumb tucked into his mouth.
The same dog.
Not the same dog. It isn’t the same dog at all. His burnt. His burnt to ash in Estrov. He hasn’t felt sad about Estrov in a long time. Hasn’t even thought of it. But the new thought, of his childhood toy, reduced to ash in the blaze, the reminder of it in such a physical form lurches something in his chest, lodges in his throat in a way it hasn’t in years. The small image of a burning, crumbling toy dog – the same one staring at him with mournful eyes, body still brand new and furred and not yet loved – makes Yassen’s eyes sting.
There are Christmas shoppers behind him. He pulls himself together.
And the little dog still sits in the window.
Someone will want it for their child. They’ll want to wrap it up, tie a bow on it and leave it under the tree for some excited child to open on Christmas. A big smile will light across their face and young fingers will pull it into their lap and stroke it just as he had. Play with it, bring it with them places, and their parents will tuck them in at night together. Some loving father or mother will walk into the shop in the next few days, point to the dog on the shelf and ask for it to be wrapped for them by the shop assistant. It will go to someone other than Yassen. Anyone else. A baby, for its first toy. A young child. An older one from some well-meaning aunt who’s forgotten their age who will push into a corner, bury under a pile of clothes and forget it somewhere it will be safe.
Yassen isn’t safe, not even for a stuffed toy. In the next few days, he must move on to the next place and get rid of or destroy whatever he has accumulated in that time. He’s a vapour. A mist.
His heart thuds, thinking of it. There’s glass between the two of them, him and the dog, and he can’t reach out and brush a thumb under the soft felt of an ear. Can’t dig his nose into it and breathe in the smell of his mother’s cooking-
It would be the shop. The smell of the shop. Not his mother’s cooking. The smell of new felt and wood polish and cardboard dust.
The bell jingles above the door as he steps inside, warmth and light rushing over him and around his coat, suddenly too bulky, too warm, in this small space. The door shuts and Yassen unzips the front of it now that he’s out of the wind.
A shopkeeper looks up over the counter. He’s in his mid-sixties, with greying hair and glasses that make him look a few years older, wearing a red woollen sweater vest and a pastel green button down shirt.
“How can I help you today, my friend? Are you looking for something?”
Just browsing, is what he wants to say. Never mind. He wants to walk out of the shop. He can’t make himself.
“Sir?”
“There’s a dog in your shop window,” he says, and curses himself for saying it. “I would like to purchase it, please.” For a child, he wants to tack on. For anyone but me. But that would be suspicious. No-one clarifies that they are buying a child’s item for a child unless they are not in fact buying it for a child. Or, at least, that is what he’s been led to believe. Yassen has no children.
The shopkeeper rounds the counter, pushing up the flap and stepping under it, and going over to the window. “That one?” he asks, pointing to the right one.
It’s easy to recognise, even from behind. “That one.”
“And would you like it to be gift-wrapped for you, sir?”
Yes, the gift is for a child. I will give it to them on Christmas Day. I am a father and I love my children and we live a normal, happy life in a house on the outskirts of this middle-sized town I’ve already forgotten the name of. I have friends, I have family, I have people who love me. I have not lost them all. I would like you to wrap this gift of a small dog to give to my children, because that is what should happen. That is the way things should be.
He should be professional, calm, unswayed by anything. An assassin should not have preferences. Or memories, or opinions, or feelings, or anything that might interfere with the perfect kill when necessary, performed to specifications for whoever pays the most. He should ask for it to be wrapped.
Yassen Gregorovich’s heart is thudding and he’s tucked his hands into his pockets. “No, thank you.” Pauses. “I will wrap it myself. Later.”
“Very well, then.” And the shopkeeper extricates the dog from the display, sits a fluffy bear up there instead – one that’s been hiding in a box in the corner, waiting its turn – and brings the dog over to the counter. Yassen pays quickly, declines a bag, tucks the dog into his pocket without thinking about how the felt is soft under the pads of his fingers; how the ears flop slightly when he brushes his thumb underneath.
He leaves the shop, bell jingling above him, and walks out onto the street.