‘I don’t think anyone knows what goes on in the Kremlin now,’ Dan said. ‘Irena, the big boss, is very sick. Nurse made a mistake with her cancer drugs. She’s off her head. All is of a blur for her now.’
‘When did that happen?’ Amy asked.
‘Last weekend,’ Dan said.
Amy and Ning both realised that this timing coincided perfectly with Ethan getting kidnapped. Leonid was surely behind this ‘mistake’ with his mother’s drugs.
‘I lift weights with Boris and Alex Aramov,’ Dan continued. ‘They’ve always been much in love with themselves. Strut like big men. But right now they are no boasting. Very quiet, like they are pregnant with big secret.’
‘What about Ethan Aramov?’ Amy asked. ‘Have you heard anything?’
Dan shrugged. ‘Who is that?’
‘He came here from California late last year,’ Amy said.
‘Ah!’ Dan said. ‘Skinny boy?’
Amy nodded. ‘He’s no bodybuilder, that’s for sure.’
‘I see Ethan three, maybe four times, but I never speak him. There is a beautiful girl called Natalka. I think she is his friend.’
‘Right,’ Amy said.
She already knew about Natalka through Ethan’s online correspondence with Ryan, but the mention of her name was reassuring because it confirmed that Dan was being honest.
‘You’ve already given us a lot of helpful information,’ Amy said. ‘Do you think you could talk to Natalka and ask what she’s heard about Ethan? And stay close to Boris and Alex. Let me know as soon as you hear anything.’
Dan eyed Amy uneasily as he aimed a hand at Ning. ‘I helped her because I didn’t like to see her in pain. But what you ask is very different. Snitching against Aramov could get me killed. My sister killed and nephew killed too.’
Amy didn’t let Dan’s knockback affect her composure. ‘Leonid Aramov is worth billions of dollars,’ she said serenely. ‘Dan, you live in this tiny apartment which people try to set on fire. I’m prepared to open a bank account for you. The opening balance will be fifty thousand dollars.
‘You’ll be paid two thousand dollars per week for as long as you’re willing to help us. The money will be tax free, and if you and your immediate family wish to become United States citizens when this is all over, we can get that sorted too. So instead of a future pumping weights with Boris Aramov at the back of the Kremlin while you wait for Leonid Aramov’s next set of orders, you could be sunning it in Miami or going to college in New York.’
‘I need to think,’ Dan said.
But Ning had lived in this apartment long enough to read Dan’s face, and she felt sure that he’d been hooked by the beautiful girl offering everything he’d ever dreamed of.
20. PIPE
Ethan didn’t get anything to read and the hours sitting in the dark with nothing to do were starting to scramble his brain. He made mental lists – ten sexiest film stars, ten favourite bands, ten best cars. He counted up to 17,492 and invented a game where he filled his mouth with water and spat it at bugs crawling across the floor.
That evening some of Kessie’s workers socialised in a clearing behind the cage hut. Now that Ethan had a hose to flush his piss and crap into the drain, he could turn the empty bucket upside down and stand on it to look out of the window.
He rested his elbows on a ledge and watched a soccer game, lit up by the headlights of two tractors. There was a lot of boozing going on and players faced off every time a dirty tackle went in. Older ranch workers sat at the edge watching, and the girls from the kitchen sat in their own lively circle, gossiping and rebuffing the occasional sweaty footballers who came over to flirt.
Ethan didn’t know what had gone on the day he’d been taken to the riverside shower, but the order had clearly been sent down that he needed to be checked on more frequently. Michael had delegated this task to the small lad who’d swept out his old cell, but he was something of a star on the football field, so it was his long-legged pal who came through the door at around ten p.m.
The boy was no more than thirteen, barefoot and wearing filthy nylon shorts and a Barcelona football shirt. Ethan had watched the lad charging around on the football field, mad keen but talentless. He was out of breath and sweat was beading up through his close-cropped hair.
The boy turned the lights on. It was far from floodlit, but Ethan was so used to dark that even the gloomy strip lights along the centre of the barn were enough to make him squint. The boy didn’t seem entirely certain what checking on Ethan was supposed to involve, so after a brief-but-awkward stare he spun and bolted back outside.
Ethan stood back on his bucket and watched the boy approach Michael, who was playing in goal. Michael seemed satisfied with whatever he was told and the boy ran back on to the field to continue charging hopelessly after footballs.
The boy had closed the outer door of the building, but for the first time since arriving Ethan found himself alone in the cell with enough light to study his surroundings in detail. One of the cages at the far end was used to store tools and for the first time he properly appreciated how many bugs came out to crawl up the walls in the night.
Ethan was briefly intrigued by a metal handle sticking out of the floor close to the cage block’s main entrance. This lever was designed so that all the animals on his side of the block could be let out to graze.
Each cage also had an override so that they could be locked individually, but as Ethan was alone and the handle was conveniently near the door, everybody who entered his cell used the lever. No human prison would be designed with such a simple locking system, but this place had been built to hold animals.
When Ethan grew bored with the novelty of the light he went back to stand on his bucket, attracted by what sounded like the biggest ruck of the night so far. But he was also a little thirsty so he grabbed the hose and gently squeezed its plastic trigger to shoot a drizzle of water into his mouth.
As the shouts outside reached a new peak, Ethan looked down his hosepipe, which ran ten metres to a tap at the opposite end of the barn. Then he spun and looked at the lever, seven metres in the opposite direction. His mind posed an obvious question:
Could he make a lasso from the hose and hook it around the lever?
There was no shortage of issues: the hose was attached to the tap head with a plastic fitting that didn’t look like it would be easy to break off. And if he could break it he’d then face an extremely awkward throw, reaching out through the bars of his cage and trying to hook something over a lever more than six metres away, by somehow pulling it sideways. And what then? It wasn’t like Ethan could run out into the street and hail a taxi.
He wouldn’t be able to put the hose back on the tap once it was off, so even trying the plan risked a beating and worse conditions. But while Ethan wasn’t sure how Leonid’s scheme to take control of the Aramov Clan was supposed to work, he knew he was only being kept alive as a way to blackmail Irena if something went wrong. He’d been here for almost a week and it might not be long before someone came through the door carrying a gun instead of a plate of food.
After a deep breath, and a careful glance at the lever to make sure he wasn’t insane, Ethan sat on the concrete floor, wound the end of the hose around both wrists, pushed his feet against the bars of the cage for leverage and started yanking with all his might.
*
Ryan and Kazakov packed their white Toyota Corolla with as much gear as they could find, putting the back seat down and filling the rear with suitcases, bedding, pillows and even a rusty old bike that they’d found in the garage of their rented house. The idea was to make it look like they’d left somewhere in a hurry with all their belongings.
They set off for the Kremlin just before eleven. The unlit road took them uphill, then broke down into a gravel-covered track for the final stretch into a valley basin illuminated by runway lights. Although the Aramovs mainly ran ex-Soviet military planes, it was a comparatively modern Boeing freighter that blasted over the
pointed star on the Kremlin’s rooftop as the Toyota stopped outside the lobby.
‘You got our story straight?’ Kazakov asked.
Ryan raised one eyebrow and replied in Russian. ‘Sure thing, Dad.’
‘You stay here in the car,’ Kazakov told him, as he reached up and flipped the switch for the overhead light. ‘That’s so they can see you when I tell my story, but put your baseball cap on so they can’t see your face.’
The Kremlin lobby always had a couple of burly armed guards on duty, but there was no formal system with IDs and Kazakov almost thought he’d bluffed his way into the building when one of the guards stepped into his path.
‘Don’t think I know your face,’ the guard said, placing one hand on the compact machine gun slung around his neck.
‘You wouldn’t,’ Kazakov said confidently, as he reached out to shake the man’s hand. ‘I’m Igor Kazlov. I was at a bar in Bishkek and a guy told me there might be security work available here.’
The guard looked down his nose at Kazakov and made a kind of snorting sound.
‘You come here at this time of night to ask for a job?’
‘I worked security at an oil installation in Kazakhstan. My contractor did a runner just before pay day. So I’m running on fumes, you know? Got my boy sitting in the car. Only enough money to keep things running for a day or two.’
The guard looked fairly sympathetic, and looked to his gun-toting colleague. ‘Keep an eye on him.’
The guard headed past the fruit machines to the bar at the back of the lobby. There were plenty of people at the tables and vodka and beer getting consumed at a rapid rate, but the atmosphere felt as gloomy as the lighting.
Ryan looked on from the car as Kazakov stood waiting with his hands plugged into the pockets of his bomber jacket. After a couple of minutes, a chunky man wearing a bar apron strode back with the guard.
The barman’s tone wasn’t unfriendly, but the message wasn’t what Kazakov wanted to hear.
‘Hey,’ the barman began. ‘I understand your situation’s grim, but you’re out of luck here.’
‘I’m experienced in security and close protection,’ Kazakov said. ‘Excellent references. But I’m so hard up right now I’ll wash dishes if that’s what you need.’
‘We run a freight operation out of the airstrip,’ the barman explained. ‘Pilots, mechanics and the like are recruited in Russia or Ukraine. Menials like me are recruited locally, but jobs here are like gold and everyone comes in through personal recommendation.’
‘Right,’ Kazakov said dourly. ‘Well is there any chance I can kip down in the bar. My son’s got a bad chest and—’
The barman interrupted and his tone hardened. ‘This isn’t a flop house. The facilities are for clan employees and family members only. I’ve got customers waiting, so I must now ask you to leave.’
‘Just one night,’ Kazakov begged, but the barman was already turning away.
The bigger of the two guards now became aggressive, eyeballing Kazakov and putting a hand on his shoulder.
‘We’ve been friendly so far,’ the guard growled, ‘but now it’s time to leave.’
To emphasise this point, the other guard swung his gun around to face Kazakov’s chest.
‘No luck?’ Ryan said, as Kazakov made it through the drizzle and opened the driver’s door of the Toyota.
‘Chances of this working were never that great,’ Kazakov said. ‘What have you seen out here?’
Ryan pointed beyond the car’s bonnet. ‘There’s plenty going on down at the airfield, but I’ve not seen anything back in the hills.’
‘So you fancy having a go?’
Ryan nodded, as Kazakov started the engine and crunched the car into first gear. While the car drove slowly over the gravel in front of the Kremlin’s main lobby, Ryan unzipped the top of a small backpack, filled with handmade wire snare traps.
He rummaged beneath the traps, pulled out a small disc magnet and pushed it behind his ear. The magnetic field this created activated a tiny transceiver which had been tweezered into Ryan’s ear canal before he’d left the house.
‘Testing,’ Ryan said, as the car began moving slowly away from the Kremlin.
Ted Brasker’s voice came from a strange place inside Ryan’s head. ‘Hearing you loud and clear, boy.’
‘We had no luck at the front door,’ Ryan told Ted. ‘Looks like I’m gonna have to go on a little hunting trip.’
‘Remember what we discussed,’ Ted said firmly. ‘No stupid risks. If you get caught, stick to your background story. Can you remember it?’
‘Ran out on my dad after a row. Hitched a ride out here to go hunting and then got lost in the dark.’
‘Perfect,’ Ted said.
Five hundred metres from the Kremlin a sharp uphill bend behind dense trees took the car out of sight of the lobby. Kazakov pulled over. If anyone had seen them, it would have looked like Ryan was getting out to pee in the bushes.
‘Good luck,’ Kazakov said, as Ryan slung his backpack over his shoulder.
Ryan’s boots crunched the undergrowth as he scrambled into the trees and set off towards the Aramov stable block, aiming to get hold of the USB stick that Ethan had plugged into Leonid Aramov’s computer.
21. BONE
Someone usually came and checked on Ethan in the middle of the night, but unless something out of the ordinary happened he’d have the next couple of hours to himself.
Breaking the length of black hose from the tap ten metres away was never going to be easy, but it was harder than Ethan expected because instead of pulling on the tap head, the hose just stretched.
When bracing against the bars failed, he stood up and pulled himself backwards with the plastic digging agonisingly into his wrists. He tried pulling and jerking the hose. Then he hit on the idea of stretching the hose as far as he could and knotting the end around one of the bars. Once the hose was stretched tight and tied to a bar at the rear of his cage, Ethan gripped the hose with both hands and pushed down with his entire bodyweight.
There was a whoosh, followed by a series of chimes as the hose clanked metal bars. Ethan dived back as the hose whiplashed, stinging his upper arm and narrowly missing his cheek as it flailed through the air.
There was the sound of water spattering the concrete up by the tap, but rather than snapping the hose from its joint with the tap, the hose itself had actually split into two pieces. All Ethan’s effort was wasted if he didn’t have enough hose to tie a loop and lasso the handle.
After a quick rub of the red welt where the catapulting hose had lashed his shoulder, Ethan pulled the hose arm over arm, counting lengths of one metre.
Luckily, the hose had snapped near to the tap and Ethan had enough hose to reach the lever. But he wasn’t sure how much extra length he needed to make the loop and tie a knot. After a couple of attempts it was clear that tying a knot in a rubber hose is bloody hard, and that he’d come up short by the time he’d made it.
But Ethan’s success in getting the hose had buoyed his spirits. He’d kept the chop bone he’d been served a couple of days earlier and had even sharpened the pointed end by scraping it across the concrete floor. He used this point to spear one of the cushions on his mattress. He then tore out a forty-centimetre strip of strong fabric and used it to knot a loop. But as he finished double knotting and gave the loop a tug to test its strength, a shaft of moonlight shot through the main door.
Ethan guessed someone had heard the noise and that he was about to get busted, but he still lifted his mattress and hastily crammed as much hose as he could underneath it.
Kessie lumbered into the cage block, for only the second time since Ethan’s arrival. He was as drunk as on his first visit and his safari trousers had an all-too-conspicuous damp patch around the crotch.
‘Who was in here last?’ Kessie asked furiously, in English.
Rather than looking at Ethan and the train of hosepipe sticking out of his mattress, Kessie stared angrily at the fluor
escent lights, and the insects swarming around them.
‘Some boy,’ Ethan said weakly.
‘A boy who hasn’t seen my electricity bill!’ Kessie shouted. ‘That much I know for sure.’
And with that, Kessie flipped off the light switch and stormed outside.
While Ethan gasped with relief, Kessie stormed into the middle of the football match and began shouting that there would be no more parties on his ranch until people learned to turn off light switches and stopped wasting his money.
Ethan didn’t understand Kessie’s language, but he watched from the bucket as the lanky kid who’d left his lights on got grassed up by Michael. The terrified lad was dragged in front of Kessie, who choked him before knocking him cold with a knee to the head.
As the shocked ranch workers dispersed, leaving the lad sprawled unattended in the dirt, Ethan jumped down off the bucket and peered back into his now dark cell. He could see nothing at all, though he knew from experience that his eyes would soon adjust enough to see shadowy outlines.
Ethan appreciated the dose of luck, but throwing the loop of hose around the handle was going to be much harder in the dark. Once he’d fed the hose through the bars, he pushed his arm through, and for once in his life he was grateful for being skinny.
He began by whipping the hose gently until he could feel it laid out straight in front of his arm. Then he made a much stronger movement, pulling the whole hose backwards and sending it cracking forwards with a whipping motion.
By the third crack he was getting a feel for the kind of swing it took to make the hose flick up into the air. But in the near dark the only feedback he got on where the hose was landing was the difference in sound between the pipe hitting the floor and clanking off the metal bars.
After each crack, Ethan would tug the hose hoping that he’d snagged the lever. After thirty attempts the metal bars were cutting into his chest and his arm and shoulder ached. But his life depended on this, so he ignored the pain.
Cherub: Guardian Angel: Book 14 Page 13
