by Seeley James
“No, later.” He mentally checked off the objects in the room and found her phone charging on the bureau next to him. “I’m looking forward to dinner.”
She found her makeup kit and faced him.
They gazed into each other’s eyes for a moment. Yuri felt something he’d never felt before. It was beyond the infatuation, anticipation, and eroticism he’d felt so many other times. It was a real desire to hold her, protect her, provide for her, cherish her.
Love.
“Someone called for you earlier.” She dug back through her case looking for another item. “A general you used to work for.”
Yuri’s heart stopped. His blood ran cold.
“He said he’d call you later. I don’t know how he got my number.”
“Did he leave his?” He picked up her phone. It was Strangelove’s connection to them and had to be disposed of.
Yuri’s stone-cold voice had resonated in the room like a killer’s. She stared at him. He needed to warm it up, mask the situation.
“Our phones look almost identical.” He held up his third burner of the day and placed it next to hers.
She crossed to him. Her hands holding her bath-gear between them. She tilted her face up and rose on her tiptoes and kissed him on the lips. She looked into his eyes for a fleeting second, smiled mischievously, then disappeared into the bathroom and shut the door.
He stared at the bland, featureless door for a full minute. His astonishment remained unbroken until the shower splashed on. He shook himself into action. He unplugged her phone, thought for a moment, and replaced it with his. If she stepped out of the shower while he disposed of her phone, there should be a familiar looking object where she left it. As long as she didn’t try to use it, he would be fine. That would give him time to hide her phone and throw Strangelove off their trail long enough to get away. With a little luck, they would be truly free by morning.
Pocketing her phone, he ran for the elevator. He’d have to use different identities and new hotels. That would take a lot of explaining. The elevator chimed open, and he entered the universal meditative state for the ride down.
How dare Strangelove call her? Yuri’s heart ached. His head pounded with rage. The fat bastard deserved to die. What did Yuri—or SHaRC—care about Mexicans or Sabel Security? Why should they kill any more innocent people for Strangelove’s sake? No. It would stop. He could beat the master at his own game.
Seething with hate by the time he reached the ground floor, he ignored the bellman and hailed his own cab. He rode north toward Central Park and walked into the darkness from there. But there was no darkness in the park. The ambient light from the city that never sleeps bathed the walkways with more light than a full moon. Yuri wondered if Americans ever knew what darkness really was. Maybe someday he would show them.
He laid Andrine’s phone in the footwell of a horse carriage as he marched by.
His mind raced with hatred for Strangelove. But when he remembered Andrine, his heart rose and fluttered away. She had kissed him. They would consummate their love after dinner. It was her message. Nothing could be better. He’d played his cards just right with her. Not too much, not too soon—not too little either. And now he would reap the benefits of being a good, decent man. He smiled. It felt good to be a good man to a good woman.
Checking his watch, he realized he’d paced more distance than he’d planned. He felt his pocket for his phone. Which he’d left behind on purpose. It was time for the call with SHaRC, and he was on the wrong end of a large city. He raced for the park’s exit. Cabs swirled by, filled with theater-goers and tourists and locals. None open for a man out of time and desperate to get back to his phone. Roman or Igor would initiate the call if he didn’t. When he failed to join, they would force the video feed open to check on him. He had to be there.
He walked and hailed and walked and hailed from 85th Street to 72nd Street before a cab picked him up. Ten minutes wasted—and he was already ten minutes late. He bolted through the lobby and raced up the stairs, preferring not to wait for an excruciatingly slow lift.
He threw open his door and saw her through the open adjoining doors.
Andrine sat on the edge of the bed, a towel around her body, another around her hair.
Her skin was gray. Her mouth was slack, her features devoid of any pretense. In her hand was Yuri’s phone. Roman’s face displayed on it.
Yuri stared at her. Then looked at Roman and realized his man was talking.
Andrine’s face rose to his. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “You did this? You killed all those people? The airliners—”
Her mouth fell open. She dropped the phone.
Yuri picked it up and yelled at Roman. “What did you say?”
“We could see nothing but the ceiling, we thought you were off camera. We were speaking in Russian, but somehow she understood—”
“Her mother is Russian, you fool. Why were you talking at all? The reason we use video—”
“How it happened doesn’t matter.” Roman was shouting. “Listen. Something came up. We think Sabel turned us in. The FBI, Interpol, everyone is looking for us. They have your picture. Sabel traced our router logs—”
“I believed you were a good—” Andrine burst into loud sobs.
“Yuri! You have to act.” Roman’s words rang in Yuri’s head. “She heard too much.”
His mind exploded. Ten minutes ago, he was in love. Ten minutes ago, his life was on the path to freedom. Ten minutes changed everything.
Now he had no choice. There was no other option.
Her eyes were locked on his, pleading. Her head shook silently back and forth, no.
She screamed.
His hands closed around her throat. Her face turned red. She tried to pry his hands away.
There was no other way. Not for the girl whose dream career was working for Amnesty International. Not for the girl who berated him for advocating the death penalty. She would never let him walk away from his complicity in #HuntersFail. It had to be done.
The movies make it look quick, easy, and quiet. Strangulation is none of those things. It takes tremendous strength and several agonizing minutes to choke a person to death.
He watched her through watery eyes. His whole future and all his dreams were dying with her. Tears dripped down his cheeks and fell on hers. They mingled together and ran like a river off her pretty face. She gurgled and thrashed and pleaded with animalistic grunts. She clawed at his wrists, her fingernails digging into his flesh. Her eyes bulged wide open, connected to his, begging for air. He squeezed harder, hoping to end her struggle quickly in a vain effort to relieve his own pain.
Alexi had been drunk. He gave up right away. Andrine was in love and clung to life with misplaced hope. He pushed her over and leaned his weight into his grip. It was best to end it quickly.
She began to lose consciousness, her eyes rolling without control. But that was only the halfway mark. Mother Nature gave life a tenacious hold in the powerful human mind. Where all rational hope to extend existence ended, the highly evolved brain retreated inward to preserve itself until the brutality passed. Her heartbeat and breathing could revive her body after several airless minutes.
“I’m sorry, Yuri.” The phone lay next to him, Roman’s face still on it. “It has to be done. You know that.”
“Shut up.” Yuri spat at the phone. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”
Her eyes focused on him once more at the sound of the voices. “Help—”
Yuri pushed down and squeezed harder. He felt blood vessels breaking. Her windpipe collapsed under his thumbs. For a long time, he pushed and squeezed. As life drained out of her, an equal weight of humanity left him.
Then he felt it. Every muscle in her body relaxed forever. Andrine’s life force was gone.
Yuri slid to the floor and wept.
CHAPTER 36
One of Pia’s eyes opened after a concentrated effort. It swept a dark, barren room. Concrete. Light seeped in f
rom a door left open an inch. A dank smell. A basement. Her arms hurt. Her feet hurt. Her weight was suspended from her wrists and propped on her ankles. Her body ached. She was stretched on a giant X.
She tried to speak but bit her lip. Still groggy.
She tried to recall her last waking moments. It came in bits and pieces.
All communications on the jet had been jammed by strong radio interference coming from the Russian fighters that forced them down in Kaliningrad. The soldiers on the tarmac had given her no explanation. No apologies. No answers of any kind. She’d been stripped of her electronics and weapons at gunpoint. She’d been escorted to a customs room at the terminal. Tania, Dhanpal, and the pilots were taken to other rooms. She never saw who hit her. She had felt only the powerful blow followed by the needle in her arm.
There was only darkness and the thin sliver of light from the door. A round knob. Not a lever. Not a bolt. This was not a dungeon. Not a cell. It was a room pressed into service. Hasty arrangements had been made. Her arrival had not been planned.
A swirling black cloud approached from the far end of the room. It morphed into Pozdeeva’s poisoned face, yellow bile still dripping from his chin. “Comfy?” he asked.
Her head lolled and snapped back up. Had she fallen asleep again? She couldn’t tell. Her lips and tongue still felt disconnected. Her muscles barely responded. Her weight burned her wrists and ankles. Did she hear voices?
“Alan. Could I get you some tea?” Eleni asked. Her dead body staggered across the room, then fell in a heap.
Her eyes closed. She heard Olesya’s voice on the phone: Do it for your mother. What did she mean by that? How did she know anything about Pia’s mother? Why didn’t Pia ask her? She was too stunned at the woman’s brutal request to commit murder on her behalf. Pia was no murderer. But if there were a man who should be killed, Viktor Popov was a prime candidate. But why do it for my mother?
A familiar priest opened the door, dragging a chair behind her. A sturdy, middle-aged woman, she wore a collar and a dark pantsuit. She stopped next to Eleni’s collapsed form and sat and sipped from a cup and read a paper.
“Why doesn’t God help me?” Pia asked.
“Why do you think it’s about you?” the priest asked without looking up. “Why do you think you’re the one who needs help?”
“Because I’m hanging from a cross. I’ve been drugged. I’m in pain. I don’t know what they want.”
“That’s really the issue, isn’t it? Not knowing what the future holds.” The woman folded her paper. “Imagine being a young man who gave up his future to care for a four-year-old girl. He didn’t know what she wanted. He didn’t know what the future held. Are you praying for his salvation—or just yours?”
Pia felt nothing but pain. Her shoulders, her rib cage, her shins, everything reported agony to her brain.
“Why is everything a riddle to you people?” Pia’s voice echoed in the closed space. “Priests, rabbis, gurus, monks, spirit guides—every answer is another question.”
“You think I’m a priest?”
“You were the Episcopal priest who presided over Carmen’s funeral.”
“You used to think I was your mother.” The woman dragged her chair into the dark. “Now you accuse me of representing God.”
“It’s all bullshit. You don’t exist.”
Pia felt the ice water dripping off her face. Her right eye opened. The left managed no more than a blurry slit. The door was open a foot. An old, sloppy man in a uniform with stars on the shoulders stood next to a young man with no insignia on his drab uniform. The young man held an empty bucket in his hand.
The old man said something in Russian. The young man saluted and left.
“I assure you,” the old man said, “I do exist.”
Pia looked down at her drenched athletic wear. A shiver rippled across her skin, traveling deep into her bones. Her teeth rattled. “Where are Tania and Dhanpal?”
“Any questions asked will be asked by me.” He folded his hands behind his back and paced to the right. “Let’s start with the easiest one. Where were you going?”
“Kaliningrad to kill someone named Strangelove. Know him?” It was Tania’s idea when the fighters first appeared alongside the jet. Say nothing about Popov. Give them no reason to search the dacha.
The old man chuckled. “He does not exist.”
“My father left a calling card on him. A scar down his neck.”
Strangelove sneered and scratched his scar.
Her bravado didn’t help. She was in deeper trouble than she expected. Dad’s words came back to her. They’re the people who murdered Pozdeeva—and they’re the people who invited you to St. Petersburg.
And now she’d delivered herself to them.
Strangelove paced a few feet away and stopped. The end of the room on the right. Pia counted six steps. Twelve feet because of his slow, deliberate stride. He twisted something with a metallic sound. Window latch? Doorknob? It squeaked, but he didn’t open it. He was testing to make sure it was locked.
“You have heard this name from the CIA?” he asked on his slow path back.
“Read it in the paper.”
“Your father taught you bad manners.” He laughed. “We do not tolerate bad manners.”
“What do you want from me?”
He stopped and looked her over. His gaze was a tactical observation, not sexual, not predatory; he was simply assessing her strength and capability. His glance ended with a casualness that telegraphed his internal report: she was nothing to worry about.
“Where is Jacob Stearne?” he asked.
“On his way to kill you, Strangelove.”
“Call me what you want.” He shrugged. “This news about Stearne is convenient. I did not wish to track him down. And your father, the great Alan Sabel, where is he?”
“Safe inside Sabel Gardens.”
The old man turned to her, tilted his head looking her over again. He turned to the doorway and called out in Russian.
A moment later, the young man came in with a large, hardwood cane and handed it to Strangelove. His furtive glance at Pia conveyed a heartfelt sympathy. He rushed out and closed the door. The room was completely dark.
She heard the whoosh of the stick an instant before it sent bolts of pain up from her shin. Another whoosh and more stinging agony from her ribs. Again, a whoosh and jolts from her left shoulder. Another and another, her knee, her breast, her stomach, her feet.
The desire to give up and die began to overwhelm her. The pain was almost too much to bear. Everyone told her it was bound to happen one day—and this was the day. She’d gone too far. Rushing off without a comprehensive plan. Running fearlessly into the unknown, flouting danger, expecting too much.
As she wrenched one way and the other, trying to defend herself, she felt something on her ankle. A chink of some kind. Concentrating, she wriggled her left ankle and felt it again. The chain links holding her down were open links, not welded. There was a chance one could bend. Maybe enough to break. When there was a chance, Pia screwed up her determination. She wrenched it harder and harder, throwing her weight to that side.
The blows were coming faster in shorter swings. He was tiring. Again and again, the stick rained down on her neck and head and thigh and calf.
He stopped.
She heard his breathing, ragged and winded. The cane clattered to the floor.
A flash blinded her. In the illuminated second, she imagined he’d taken a picture with his phone. She couldn’t be sure.
He stepped away, toward the door. The sliver of light enlarged and he stepped through.
“What do you want to know?” she called out.
He stopped, a silhouette in the open door’s narrow space. He shrugged. “Nothing.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Why do you think this’s about you?” Strangelove asked without looking back.
“What are you doing?”
He turned to fac
e her. “Making sure your slow and painful death summons Alan Sabel.”
The door closed.
Pia took a deep breath. Her promise to Olivier was no idle threat. Strangelove and his boss, Popov, will die. Theirs were the deaths she looked forward to with unanticipated joy. She had to get out of there and get back to her people. They would storm the fortress and lay waste to this maniac. Nothing had filled her with more desire in her life. She wanted them dead.
The swelling began immediately. Every inch of her skin on the front of her body screamed in pain. No stranger to injuries—sports injuries, at least—she recalled how she persevered through each one and eventually healed. This was much greater pain, but ignoring it was her only option. She had to get out of there and free her friends. Their peril was her fault.
She twisted her left ankle. The chink in the chain revealed itself. She held it taut against the anchor and pulled with all her strength. Nothing gave. She relaxed and caught her breath. Once again, she moved the chain link to the right place, twisted it at just the right angle, and this time used her heel for leverage against the cross. The link snapped. Its noise echoed through the room. The link pinged off a wall in the dark.
She had a method. Therefore, she had hope. Her pain subsided for a second.
Ignoring the agony as it rushed back, she worked her wrists and ankles. The throbbing grew, her joints swelled, her muscles ached. She continued twisting, leveraging any angle she could find to free herself. It took the better part of an hour. When her feet hit the floor, she wanted to jump for joy.
The pain racking her body dissuaded her.
She fought off exhaustion and tiptoed to the right. She found the wall. Feeling her way in total darkness, she discovered a window and traced its edge to a latch. The latch was padlocked. Farther down she found empty shelves and bare concrete walls. At the corner, more wall. Another corner, more wall. Then, the door.
The aching and swelling made her woozy. Holding the doorknob for stability, she took a moment to gather her strength.
Backing from the door, she felt the floor with her feet until she found the hardwood cane. With a deep breath, she powered through the pain in her bones and marched forward.
