Rustem Adaev
Rustem Adaev is a corsac fox in We Can Fix Pawbert, an operative of Mikhail Icener's network and the mammal who held Perkins and Botasky at Station Nine, a decommissioned Lynxley climate station at Ostrog Point on the Vladifrostok coast. He is the corsac in the opening Vladifrostok sequence of "Golden Age", unnamed there, who reads the screen of Perkins' device and cancels the transfer; the W-Series gives him his name. He is taken alive at Station Nine and turned over to Vladifrostok, where he awaits trial.
Background
Adaev came from the steppes, and the coast has dulled the red-gold in his fur. He turns sideways at every door frame, a habit from some earlier building in which he was the smallest mammal present. When Icener's polar bear picked up Perkins' device, it was Adaev who examined it, observed that ZSI was onto them, and canceled the transfer. The two rabbits, both shot, were not finished; Costa's reading is that Icener meant to spend them later, and the mammal who kept them was Adaev. He closed Botasky's abdominal wound himself, from a book. After the city fell the instructions stopped, and he went on keeping them anyway, running the generator and buying the fuel with nobody left to report to. He signed for the diesel every month in his own paw, and it is that ledger, read by Vladifrostok state security after a survey drone flagged the warm building, that gives the ZSI team his name before they meet him.
Series History
W-Series
In "Souls on Board" he is the only mammal the two rabbits ever see: the tray with its bread, its gray bowl, its tin cup skinned with frost and the length of pine for Perkins' teeth, the generator hour announced in the voice of a landlord, the two fingers at Botasky's throat and the look at the wound on every visit. He never answers Perkins' question of what they are for. When Yuri Volkov's thermal survey finds the building and Reacher's team comes through the door, he is in the corridor below the stair, arms locked out, a pistol in both paws, backed up against the barred door, and what he says to Luther is that Icener is dead and nobody came. Neagley answers that somebody came. He sets the pistol on the concrete, laughs until the laugh turns into something else, and tells them the bar sticks. Zip-tied in the corridor, he is the mammal Botasky tips his head toward when O'Donnell asks who closed the wound; the medic calls it bad work and the only reason Botasky is talking. He goes to Vladifrostok, whose government wants a fox in a courtroom because the mammal who broke the city is ashes in another country. In a cell, shown a photograph of the servicing cart that killed a first officer and asked whether he knew, he is silent for a full minute and then says one sentence, asking that the keeping be recorded beside the rest of it. Volkov writes it down.
Key Relationships
Perkins
Perkins asks him every way there is what the two rabbits are for, and never gets an answer he believes. At Station Nine he tells Luther that Adaev is the reason they are breathing and hears back that he is the reason they are on a shelf, and agrees that both are true and that it will be a problem for someone, probably him. At the memorial wall he admits he was wrong to think the fox had no answer: a generator and a fuel account and two rabbits worth nothing to anybody, and a mammal who stood in the doorway and declined to say so. Luther calls that possibly the kindest thing Adaev did; Perkins puts it on a list with some other things.
Botasky
Adaev closed the wound in Botasky's abdomen without being a doctor, and checked it on every visit with a small noise in his throat. O'Donnell's verdict is that a mammal who cared less would have made a worse job of it.
Luther Pawthorne
Luther tells Volkov before the raid that he is not going out on the ice to kill a corsac fox, and in the corridor he tells Adaev twice to put the weapon down and steps over him to lift the bar. Later, at the wall, it is Luther who suggests that the fox's refusal to answer Perkins may have been the kindest thing he did.
Yuri Volkov
Volkov has had Adaev's name since the diesel ledger came off the ridge, and his government wants the fox tried rather than dead, for the sake of a city full of families who have yet to see anybody tried for anything. He is in the room when Adaev finally speaks, and he is the one who writes it down.
Mikhail Icener
Adaev's orders came from Icener's organization and stopped when it came apart. What he says to Luther in the corridor, before he puts the pistol down, is that Icener is dead and has been for a long time.
Key Quotes
| Quote | Context |
|---|---|
| "The bar sticks. You have to lift and pull at the same time." | Surrendering in the corridor at Station Nine ("Souls on Board") |
| "I kept them alive for a long time and I would like that written down somewhere near the other thing." | In a Vladifrostok cell, shown the photograph of the servicing cart ("Souls on Board") |