She dropped into a crouch and placed her head between her knees, breathing deeply, willing herself to stay conscious. The linoleum floor was cool on her bare feet and she thought that little chill might be the only thing preventing the darkness from overtaking her.
Time was ticking, and if Kuznetsov had been telling the truth about barging back into the room after three minutes, his return would take place soon. But Tracie wasn’t about to let that fact hurry her along. Remaining awake and alert was much higher on her list of priorities than worrying about some arrogant Russian cop seeing her in her underwear.
A dozen or so deep breaths and the curtain of blackness began to recede. The buzzing in her ears faded and the nausea dialed itself back to something manageable, more or less. Tracie took one last cleansing breath and then used the bed’s cardboard-thin mattress to push herself to her feet.
She reached behind her back and untied the hospital gown, first at the waist and then at the neck, shrugging out of it and letting it drop to the floor.
The door opened and even though Tracie’s back was turned she knew it was Kuznetsov.
The cop said, “It is time to go, let us…” His voice trailed away as he caught sight of her and then he said, “Lisus Khristos, you are not even dressed yet? What is the holdup?”
Tracie ignored him. Her panties had survived the auto accident unscathed, so the nurse who’d undressed her while unconscious had left them on. She slipped on her bra—a few splotches of blood, mostly on the right side, where her head had apparently bled significantly—but nothing too serious, and then turned toward the door to see Detective Kuznetsov with his back turned, stepping into the hallway.
At least he’s not a total monster, Tracie thought. Then she decided to withhold judgment on that opinion until learning what the hell he had in store for her after removing her from the hospital.
Just before the door snicked shut, he called through it, “You have two more minutes, and then we are leaving whether you have finished dressing or not.”
She rolled her eyes and stepped into her jeans. They’d been bloodied, like her bra, but were in better condition than she would have expected. Her blouse, though, was a different story. The right side looked as though it had been dipped in a barrel of blood and then tossed onto a dirt pile. She grimaced and gamely pulled it on over her head, doing her best to avoid dragging it over her fresh stitches.
Then she slipped on her socks and shoes and eased onto the side of the bed to await Kuznetsov’s return. He was undoubtedly just standing in the hallway on the other side of the door, but Tracie couldn’t think of a single thing to be gained by speeding up the process of being escorted into the pitch-dark Russian night by a cop who may or may not be dirty, and then taken to an unknown location for questionable purposes.
Plus, she was exhausted. The process of getting dressed had taken maybe ninety seconds, tops, but she felt like she’d just stayed up for seventy-two hours straight and, oh by the way, forgotten to eat during those three days.
She knew it would be the shortest of breaks anyway, because by this time Kuznetsov had proven himself punctual, if nothing else. And right on cue, the door pushed open.
Despite the circumstance, Tracie couldn’t help but smile as the detective announced, “I am coming in,” before doing so. He’d obviously been uncomfortable seeing her nearly naked on his last trip inside the room and was tying to avoid a repeat of that awkward scenario.
“I would say welcome back,” Tracie remarked as he stepped into the room and stood just inside the door, “but I can’t manage it. I would much rather be asleep in this bed than preparing to go somewhere with you. Which reminds me, where are we going again?”
Kuznetsov ignored her question and said, “You could still avoid all of this by simply answering my questions.”
“I’ve answered everything you asked me.”
“Yes, well, when I say ‘answering my questions,’ I mean answering them truthfully.”
“What? You don’t believe my name is Anna Karenina?”
He tried to suppress a smile and mostly succeeded. Then he said, “I do not. Nor do I believe it is Anastasia Romanov.”
“In that case, I guess it’s time to go.”
Kuznetsov pulled the door open fully and gestured toward the hallway like some awkward Halloween date who had decided for some unfathomable reason to dress up as a Russian cop.
Tracie swallowed heavily and trudged into the hallway. The lights had been dimmed in deference to the late hour, or maybe they were always kept low.
The detective said, “Straight past the nurse’s station is the elevator. That is where we are going.”
“Planning to apologize to the nurse supervisor on our way out the door?”
Kuznetsov snorted and said nothing. No one said a word as they passed the nurse’s station, but Tracie could feel the angry glares directed at the cop. If he felt them as well it didn’t seem to affect him.
He pressed the down button at the elevator, and a minute or so later they shared a quiet ride to the ground floor and then walked to the hospital exit. The night was cool and moist, and Tracie guessed it would be raining soon.
Kuznetsov guided her to an unmarked Russian car and unlocked the passenger door. Then he pulled it open and gestured her inside. “Do not do anything stupid,” he said.
Now it was Tracie turn to snort softly. “You’re the one with the badge and the gun. All I have is two-dozen stitches in my skull and a bloody shirt. What the hell am I going to do to you?”
It was a legitimate question, and one almost anybody in her situation would probably ask. But in Tracie’s case it was mostly for show. Already she was watching and listening, soaking up her surroundings, taking everything in, doing a risk/reward assessment to determine whether now was the right time to make a move on him.
It only took a second to decide in the negative. Even though she was under tremendous time pressure, she was injured and unarmed. She was unfamiliar with the area and at a distinct disadvantage against a cop whose guard was up.
No, she would wait.
For now.
She slid into the passenger seat, curious to see what would happen next.
***
A trip to the Rostov jail happened next.
Rostov was not a particularly large city, and the ride from hospital to jail took less than fifteen minutes. Traffic was virtually nonexistent and Kuznetsov seemed unencumbered by speed limits as he drove with one hand on the wheel, barely tapping the brake at intersections and blowing through traffic lights with abandon.
Tracie was grateful for the lack of traffic. She had no desire to be involved in a second car wreck in less than five hours.
The combination police station/jail was a hulking structure that looked ancient while lacking any semblance of the magnificent architectural flourishes typical of buildings constructed in Russia prior to the “people’s revolution.” A single street lamp struggled to hold back the encroaching darkness, and from outside, the station appeared mostly empty.
Tracie glanced across the seat at the cop, eyebrows raised. “This is where you work? When was the last time anybody did any maintenance on this place?”
“Probably before you were born.”
“It looks nasty.”
“I am sorry it is not up to your royal standards, Princess Anastasia. But do not forget it is your own fault you have been brought here.”
“Believe me,” Tracie said, “I won’t forget. I’ll be having nightmares about this evening for a long time.”
Kuznetsov turned in his seat and smiled. In the murky light his face looked harsh, evil even.
“Oh yes you will,” he said.
26
June 14, 1988
Approximately 2:30 a.m.
Rostov City Jail
Rostov, Russia, USSR
The building had appeared mostly empty from the outside, Tracie decided, because it was mostly empty on the inside. The law enforcement presence in Rostov
was apparently minimal during the overnight hours, at least in the middle of the week. Office doors were closed and Tracie could see just a single dispatch officer seated behind a large desk at the front of the dimly lit bullpen as Kuznetsov led her down a long, dark hallway.
At the end of the hallway he paused, picking through a set of keys before selecting one and using it to unlock a metal door, which he then shoved open with his shoulder. On the other side was a pair of cells separated by a central corridor. Both were empty. Tracie guessed these were holding cells, where the police could toss drunks while they sobered up, and hookers and vagrants while they awaited processing.
And young women with no identification who’d gotten into car accidents and refused to cooperate with the investigating officer.
“Take your pick,” Kuznetsov said, indicating the two choices with open hands.
“Wow, how do I choose?” Tracie said snidely. “They’re both so appealing.”
The cells were ancient and looked as though they hadn’t been upgraded—or even cared for in any significant way—since the day the facility opened its doors sometime in the 1800s. Rusty paint hung flaking off the heavy iron bars, and inside each cell sat a single rickety cot that made Semashko City Hospital’s beds look like something out of a five-star hotel. The concrete floor inside both cells featured a series of brownish stains that to Tracie looked suspiciously like dried blood, and a single bare bulb hung from each ceiling by its frayed wiring.
“Again,” Kuznestov said, “you could avoid this choice by an—”
“Yes, I know,” Tracie interrupted. “All I have to do is answer your questions. But I have a question for you. Why is the victim of an automobile accident being treated like a criminal, simply because I forgot my identification tonight? The driver of the truck that hit me was at fault. I was minding my own business, driving home.”
“No one is accusing you of anything or treating you like a criminal. But when you refuse to answer even the most basic of questions, after an arsenal of weapons suitable for defending a small country against armed invasion was taken off your body, I begin to suspect you are hiding something. As a law enforcement professional I want to know what that something might be.”
“So I’m not being treated like a criminal, and yet I’m being herded into a jail cell in the middle of the night. And this makes sense in your world?”
“Make up your mind about your living arrangements, or I will choose for you.”
“By all means, please do,” Tracie said, her voice dripping with venom.
The detective turned and pulled open the cell door on his right. “Welcome home,” he said simply.
Tracie entered the jail cell, her head held high despite the pain ripping through it. She knew the door would slam shut behind her with a loud clang, and when it did she mostly avoided flinching.
Mostly.
“Enjoy your evening, Anastasia,” Kuznetsov said mockingly. “We will talk more in the morning. I am guessing by then you will be anxious to tell me anything I want to know, if only to avoid spending a second night inside these luxury accommodations.”
“Whatever you say, Columbo,” Tracie muttered to herself. She wandered over to the cot and sat gingerly, not entirely convinced it wouldn’t just fold up on itself and deposit her onto the floor. It held her weight, though, and Tracie glared defiantly at Kuznetsov’s back as he departed, just in case he decided to turn around.
He didn’t.
***
In spite of all she’d been through tonight and how poorly she was feeling, it took Tracie awhile to become drowsy enough to sleep. Kuznetsov’s parting comment was bothering her, because this jail cell didn’t exactly qualify as spirit-shattering torture.
By telling her that in the morning she would be “anxious” to answer all his questions, Kuznetsov was implying she was going to suffer tonight. And while these quarters definitely qualified as unpleasant, they certainly wouldn’t be enough to convince her to start spilling her guts. She didn’t think the cell would be enough, in and of itself, to crack anybody but the weakest-minded of individuals.
She occupied herself by looking for the closed-circuit video camera or cameras that she knew must be present in the tiny cellblock. The cops would want to keep an eye on their drunks/hookers/vagrants to ensure they didn’t kill each other on a busy night. But if the cameras were there, they were well hidden.
Eventually her eyes began to droop. She pulled the blanket off the bed and shook it out, searching for dirt or lice or bedbugs or anything else she wouldn’t want crawling over her while she was asleep. She didn’t find any but wasn’t entirely convinced they weren’t still there.
Then she lay down on the bed fully dressed and draped the blanket over her body. The blood had mostly dried on her clothing and it was sticky and stiff, and Tracie had to admit this was one of the more uncomfortable evenings she’d spent recently.
On the other hand, over the course of her career she’d had plenty of worse nights. She’d overnighted in the freezing cold of a Russian snowstorm and in the heat and insect-filled humidity of the Florida Everglades. She’d been shot and stabbed, beaten and poisoned. She’d long ago lost track of all the bones she’d broken.
She could survive a few hours in a Soviet jail. And if Detective Sergeant Kuznetsov thought a night in this cell was going to change a damned thing, well, that was his problem.
***
Tracie was jerked awake by the discordant clang of the jail cell door being slammed shut. She’d always been a light sleeper, but training and years of experience had taught her to doze, if not quite with one eye open, as close to that as reasonably possible.
So it took less than a second to transition from a light slumber to full wakefulness. She almost didn’t even bother opening her eyes at the noise, since it seemed obvious the crimestoppers in the Rostov branch of the Russian Militsiya were just bringing in another poor schmuck, probably for not having an ID in his possession while getting run over by an eighteen-wheeler, and were depositing said poor schmuck into the cell across the corridor.
But just to be sure, she lifted her head, noted that her brief nap had done nothing to lessen the pain shooting through her skull and the soreness in her various bumps and bruises, and glanced in the direction of the second holding cell.
It was empty.
Instead of using the other cell, the Rostov cop had elected to place the new prisoner in Tracie’s.
And it was a man.
And he was large and dirty, and the body odor that wafted around him was nearly visible.
A cop was standing by the entry door, watching. Presumably it was the officer who’d just brought in the new recruit. It wasn’t Kuznetsov and it wasn’t the guy Tracie had seen behind the dispatch desk when she’d been brought in.
The cop saw Tracie look up at him and he smirked. Then he winked. Only after that did he exit the cellblock and slam the metal door closed behind him.
Tracie pushed herself to a sitting position. She wondered what time it was but could only make the most approximate of guesses, because her watch had disappeared somewhere between the accident scene and Semashko City Hospital. There was no clock in the cellblock.
Their cell contained only one bed, and Tracie wasn’t about to try to sleep anymore tonight. Not with the new arrival’s eyes crawling over her like a starving man sizing up the steak on his plate.
She was about to get up and offer the man the bed when he grunted, “What happened to you?”
Tracie raised her eyebrows, uncertain what he was referring to.
He pointed at the side of his head and said, “Your hair. Half of it is missing.”
“Car accident,” she said. She didn’t bother elaborating, assuming the sutures stitched into the side of her skull told the rest of the story clearly enough.
The man shrugged, apparently satisfied. He turned away and walked to the corner of the cell where a stainless steel toilet sat bolted to the wall and the floor. He unzipped his fly
and began pissing into the bowl, unconcerned that he was sharing quarters with a woman.
Tracie looked away. She was no prude but she was exhausted and in pain and worried about a tactical nuclear device and had no desire to watch what looked like a middle-aged panhandler take a leak.
The man finished and zipped up and Tracie thought, Thank God for small favors.
Then he meandered across the cell and plopped himself down on the cot next to her. The stench was overwhelming.
She fought the urge to grimace as much as she fought the urge to get up and move to the other side of the cell. Something told her it would be a bad idea to show weakness to a guy who looked like he would be more than happy to take advantage of the helpless.
“Is this your way of saying you want the bed?” she said after a moment of silence.
He grinned. Some of his teeth were missing and the ones that were left were rotting stumps sticking crookedly out of his gums.
“Da, I want the bed,” he said. “But I want to share it with you.”
“I don’t think so, you’re—”
Tracie started pushing herself to her feet, but before she could rise fully the man wrapped one big arm around her waist and pulled her against his body in a tight embrace.
27
June 14, 1988
Approximately 3:00 a.m.
Rostov City Jail
Rostov, Russia, USSR
“You have two seconds to let me go,” Tracie said. Her face was crushed against the big man’s armpit, and the words came out muffled but mostly understandable. The stitches in her head were on fire from being pressed against his filthy wool shirt.
“Let you go,” the man said. “Why would I let you go? We are just getting to know each other. We both have to spend the night here, so we might as well enjoy our time together.”
Tracie’s right arm was pinned between the vagrant’s left arm and his rib cage and it took her a moment to shake it free, as the man continued squeezing relentlessly. She felt him kissing the left side of her head as he spoke, her hair preventing his lips from touching skin. Thank God.
The Nuclear Option Page 14
