“Did you tell any of this to Victor Perov?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“In Zagorsk. In the bell tower.”
More whispering. “How much did you tell him?”
“All of it.”
The whispering went on for a while. Someone picked up a telephone. The Tatar was talking into the phone in Russian. Out of the unintelligible string of Russian rose the word “Sigmund.”
They were talking to Sigmund.
The realization chilled her. The drug was wearing off.
Then they were off the telephone. More whispering. She heard the interrogator say,rechnoy vokzal , which meant “river station.” But that didn’t make any sense. God, she wished she knew more Russian!
Then the door opened, and footsteps went outside.
Now she heard only the voices of the doctor and the big man. The Tatar must have left with the others. There was the sound of a match being lit. A few seconds later, the smell of burning tobacco reached her nose beneath the hood.
The men’s words came through in maddening lapses of comprehension. “Not enough (the doctor) . . . Usual way (the big man) . . . Where? (the doctor) . . . Not find it (the big man).” The conversation became clipped and then ended. Something had been decided.
Her hood was removed. She blinked up at the big man. He held a double-barreled shotgun at her face. Behind her, the doctor was untying her hands.
“Vstavay!” said the big man. When she didn’t react, the doctor grabbed her shoulders and lifted her to her feet. Her hands were bound behind her back. Her legs were numb and tingling from being bound, and she started to fall. The doctor caught her.
The big man motioned with the barrel of the gun for her to go toward the front door. The doctor opened the door and stood aside for her to pass. She went outside. It was dark. She wondered if it was the same night. The porch was slippery from the frozen snow, and she nearly fell again. It was difficult to walk with her hands behind her.
The two men talked some more. The doctor disappeared behind the building and returned a few seconds later with a shovel.
“Poshli!” the big man said, and poked her back with the butt of his shotgun. They started along a trail that skirted the edge of a large field. It was a clear night, and she had no trouble spotting star Sirius in the east. The Magellanic Clouds were up there somewhere. Perhaps Victor, too, was gazing up at them. The thought came to Katherine as though from a dream.
They walked on through the frozen mud and snow. Katherine’s teeth chattered.
The ground rose and then fell. Ahead, a forest created a line of darkness. They were making directly for it. Katherine began to sob.
The men didn’t notice. They talked constantly. She understood none of what they said.
Suddenly, the big man said, “Stoy!”
She stopped. The men talked some more. She heard the words “back at the hut . . . best. Why not?” They seemed to change their minds about something. The big man circled around her and then pointed for her to go back along the path they had come.
What had just happened?
They went back along their route. The men did not speak at all now. They seemed lost in thought. After fifteen minutes, they got back to the cabin. The big man pushed her across the living room to the back room. She went through the doorway, and before her was a bed. The big man pressed the gun hard into her back, propelling her toward the bed. He growled something at her. She turned and looked at their faces. The doctor was mumbling to himself. His eyes darted about nervously. The big man looked anxious. Excited.
Then Katherine understood.
The big man pushed her onto the bed. She landed on her stomach, so that she was hunched over the bedside. The doctor turned her over and lifted her feet onto the bed. He grabbed her breast. She screamed and kicked him in the side. He groaned, and the big man pushed him away with the end of his gun. They began to argue. Katherine lay on her back, her hands tied behind her. She struggled against the ropes but they were too tight. She gave up and lay still.
She saw it now as if it were on a movie screen in one of those twelve-plex cinema complexes at the mall. These two men would rape her, taking turns until she no longer interested them. Then they would zip up their flies and walk her along the trail to the forest she had seen. At some point, perhaps a designated place where this sort of thing was done, they would stop. The big man would take a step back and raise his shotgun at her face. She would blink at him. He would pull the trigger. A flash and a bang. She would be blown backward by the force of the shot and would fall to the ground. Somewhere far off a dog would bark. The men would stand over her body and remark upon how very dead she was. They would argue over who would do the digging, and then, once the work was underway, they would debate whether the hole was deep enough. The work would take all night, but finally they would roll her corpse over the side of the grave. It would fall like a sack of potatoes and land with athud. Then there would be the filling-up to do, the disguising of their handiwork, don’t forget to bury the shell casing . . . so much to think about! Then the long hike back to the cabin. Perhaps for a shot of vodka. Perhaps a bath. Perhaps not.
In the cabin, the big man handed the gun to the doctor. The doctor held it awkwardly, as though it were a snake. He sat in a chair at the end of the bed and let the barrel drop to the wood floor. There was a littletap as it touched the floor. The big man looked at her.
Everything was very clear to her now, exaggerated, slowed down. She saw that the big man’s one eye was open a fraction more than the other. He had a small tattoo on the back of his hand. His fingernails were chewed down. His eyes were brown with gray flakes. His teeth were yellow, and he had one gold tooth way back in his mouth.
He took off his coat and hung it over the back of a chair. He began to unbutton his shirt, keeping his eye on her. He took off his shirt, then his shoes, then his pants, layer after layer, until he was naked. He was built like a bull, all muscle, none of it defined. The hair on his face crawled down his neck and fanned out over his chest, his back, his ass, his legs, his feet, even his toes. His penis was erect and stood out ridiculously from his body. It was the only thing on him not covered by hair.
He came toward her. His face was deadly serious. He lifted her effortlessly and plunked her in the center of the mattress. She wriggled some more against her bonds. It seemed to excite him. He crawled onto the bed and kneeled beside her. He said something to her, and then, in one movement, ripped open her blouse. Buttons flew like shrapnel. They madechink-chink sounds on the wood floor. He grinned at her exposed bra. Another rip. There went her bra. He pulled at her blouse but it would not give up so easily; the ropes binding her wrists were holding it in place. He pulled harder, lifting her body off the mattress. She cried out. It became a battle of bone against fabric. She feared he would dislocate her wrists, but this was a matter of no concern to him as he pulled again and again. There was arip , and the cuffs of her blouse surrendered and slipped free. He tossed the blouse aside.
Something felt different on Katherine’s wrists. With a start she realized what it was: His final yank had pulled the ropes partially over her hands. Katherine twisted her right hand behind her. The rope fell away.
Her hands were free beneath her body.
By now, the big man had already removed her jeans and panties. The doctor watched it all from his ringside seat at the end of the bed. He leaned on the barrel of the shotgun and craned his head forward for a better view.
The big man held his stubby hand in front of her and then lifted his index finger, displaying it to her. A moment later, a fat finger penetrated her vagina.
The violation gave Katherine a burst of strength like none she had ever known. She jerked herself to a sitting position and drove two fingernails into the man’s eyes. It was a direct hit. There was a popping sound like a grape being squashed on pavement. He screamed and fell backward. With his hands over his eyes, he rolled off the end of the bed directly int
o the lap of the doctor. Together, the two of them rocked backward in the chair, which promptly collapsed. The gun came loose and fell beside the doctor. The big man landed on the other side of the doctor from the gun, and he was already getting to his hands and knees. He was not as badly wounded as Katherine had hoped. With lightning speed, he dove across the doctor for the gun. Katherine leaped headfirst off the bed. She was closer and fell on the gun as he dove into her side. She curled her fingers around the barrel, pulled it against her body and rolled two times away from him. She got to her feet, but the big man was already coming at her. He was a foot away, hands out, reaching for the barrel of the shotgun. She raised the gun and pulled the trigger. The gun leaped back into her shoulder, and the big man’s chest exploded in front of her. It looked as though a bomb had gone offinside his body. Blood splattered over Katherine. He fell to the floor on his back, and didn’t move. His face wore a look of astonishment. His penis was still erect.
The doctor cowered on the floor at the foot of the bed. She pointed the gun at him, and he began to weep and repeat something over and over in Russian.
Katherine walked to him. The report of the shotgun still rang in her ears, and her shoulder ached from its recoil.
So he expects me to kill him, she thought. There was indeed a second, loaded barrel for the job. She stood over him for a while listening to him whimper. She turned the gun around and raised the butt end as though it were an ax. She swung it onto the doctor’s head. There was a tremendouscrunch and his body went limp. Blood gushed from his wound.
She raised her eyes and found herself looking into a mirror. What she saw caused her to drop the shotgun. In the mirror was a woman, naked, her face and breasts covered with blood. It was like a scene from a B-grade horror film.
She ran to the sink in the kitchen and turned on the water. She found some soap and began to wash. She kept on scrubbing long after the blood was gone. Finally, she turned off the water and went back into the bedroom. The room smelled like rotten fruit. She stepped over the body of the big man and found her clothes. They were in shreds. She remembered that the doctor was about her size and went to where he lay. She began to undress him. Blood continued to ooze from his head wound. She frowned and checked his pulse. He was dead. Damn.
You’re on a roll tonight girl. Bang! This one’s dead! Whack! That one’s dead!Hooray for the good guys! Anyone else care to try his luck against Dr. Death?
Honey, you’re hysterical.
Damn right!
She put on the doctor’s pants, shirt, sweater and coat. They all fit her snugly. She took his fur hat from the floor and looked in the mirror. A Russian peasant woman looked back at her. She picked up the shotgun from the floor and used a bed sheet to wipe the blood from the stock. She took a last look at the bodies of the men and left the room. She started across the sitting room toward the door. She stopped and thought a minute. She went to a space heater and kicked it over. She did the same to the other one. The red coils hit the wood floor, and smoke began to rise.
She went outside. She stepped off the porch and looked up at the sky. Her gaze fell on Sirius and a jolt of hysteria ran through her like an electric shock. She looked away. She could not allow herself to fall apart. That would come later.
An owl hooted. It alone disturbed the stillness of the night. There were no other houses about, no lights but the stars overhead, just fields and trees stretching like the sea to the horizon. She started up the driveway, sidestepping the frozen puddles. Behind her, the cabin began to glow as flames engulfed it. Her shadow danced eerily before her in the red-yellow light. She didn’t look back. She scanned the sky for the North Star. It was on her right.
She was alive. She was heading west.
11
The blackness of Rechnoy Park enveloped Victor Perov like a blanket. He looked anxiously over his shoulder, peering into the darkness to see if he was followed. A deserted asphalt path stretched back a few yards and then disappeared into a thin forest. The night was still except for the distant howl of a dog. He saw no one. That was good. It was 2:00 A.M. in suburban northern Moscow and anyone walking about would have been suspicious.
Ahead a red “M” glowed sinisterly. It marked the metro stop Rechnoy Vokzal — River Station. It was from here that Victor would make the short trek to the river, to his rendezvous with Katherine’s contact.
Sigmund.
It was the last place Victor wanted to be, and he wondered if there was still time to turn back. He felt like a man who had boarded the wrong airplane. The only way off was to jump.
The trip back from Zagorsk earlier that day had gone off without a hitch. The KGB agents that had swarmed over the monastery left shortly after Katherine’s tour bus pulled away. Victor waited a while longer and then departed himself. He wore the priest’s robes out of the monastery walking to a side street to where he had stashed his car. He stripped off the robe, got his license plate from his trunk and put it on the car. He kept to back roads until he reached Moscow’s outer ring road. From there, he blended into the great stream of traffic to and from the Soviet capital. He passed three permanent traffic police checkpoints without being stopped.
But he had not gone straight home. He needed to think, so he went to Red Square instead. He called Oksana from a taksifon and told her he was safe. He hadn’t spoken to her in two days. She asked when he would be home, but he didn’t say. He said nothing about Katherine; it was too dangerous to talk on the phone. Besides, what would he tell her?
Anton — alive?
It came down to this: Who did he believe? His mother? Or Katherine Sears?
That was an easy choice. But what reason would Katherine have to lie?
She wasn’t lying.
He was sure of that. He had looked into her face. He had heard her astonishing words in Russian. He had held her. They had kissed.
He smiled at the memory of that. It had been a crazy thing to do, but it had seemed oddly right at the time. It had been a long time since Victor had permitted himself that kind of foolish impulse. It felt good.
He scuffed the cobblestones of Red Square with the heel of his boot and kept on wandering through the ancient marketplace.
No, Katherine was not lying. She believed Anton was alive. But that didn’t make it true.
With no particular plan in mind, Victor made his way to the river and got on a boat. He got off when he saw the Ferris wheel of Gorky Park. He found a bench beside the carousel and, for an hour, watched the children ride. He smiled at their joy, but it made him strangely sad. He didn’t know why.
The park was closing when he made up his mind — he could not ignore Katherine’s message. He had to follow through: He owed her that much. He owed Anton that much.
He went to a taksifon by the river and dialed the number Katherine had made him memorize. The phone began to ring.
“Allo?”
“Sigmund?”
There was a short pause. “Da.”
Victor’s stomach turned over. He had not expected Sigmund to be real. He had an impulse to hang up.
“Do you know who this is?” asked Victor.
“Da.”
“Our friend said you would meet me.”
“Notmy friend,” said the voice. It was bitter. And scared. “You are not my friend either.”
Victor said, “That’s true. I’m not.”
“I don’t like this.”
“So let’s not do it.”
The line crackled and the voice said, “Do you believe what you were told?”
“I believe my friend believes it.”
“Hmm.”
Victor looked out over the river. A boat was steaming upstream. “Look, uh, Sigmund — ”
“Tonight. Two o’clock. Walk from the Rechnoy Vokzal metro stop to the passenger port, Berth 4-A.”
“Wait a minute — ”
“I’ll make contact. If you’re followed, I’ll know it. You have one chance, one chance only.”
“But — ”
Click.
Victor stared at the receiver and thought, what the hell just happened?
The next six hours were an anxious time of more wandering and waiting. But at last he began to make his way to his rendezvous. He flagged a taxi and took it as far as Vodny Stadion Station, about fifteen minutes south of Rechnoy Vokzal. The streets of Moscow were quiet. The taxi driver tried to strike up a conversation, but Victor was buried in his thoughts.
At 1:45 A.M. he got out of the taxi and began to hike north through the dark park. He walked slowly, checking his watch, pacing himself so that he would arrive at the meeting point at exactly two o’clock.
He reached the metro stop and looked around. About a quarter-mile away a housing block rose over the trees. It was a relatively new region and the housing had not yet begun to crowd the boundaries of the metro station. An ambulance was parked beside a shoe store. No one was about. Overhead, he spied Sirius, the Dog Star. The Magellanic Clouds, invisible except with a powerful telescope, were located in that direction. He gazed up as though he could see the star cluster with his unaided eyes. He thought of Katherine. He felt better knowing she was safe. Tomorrow she would be on her way back to the United States, out of reach of the KGB.
Victor shivered. He started northwest toward Berth 4-A of the river port, Rechnoy Vokzal.
Behind the steering wheel of his ambulance, Sigmund watched Victor find the pedestrian underpass for Leningradskoye Shosse, disappear into it and then emerge a minute later on the far side of the highway. Victor followed the asphalt path past the thirty-foot-high gates that led to Moscow’s main river port. A few seconds later, Victor was gobbled up by the darkness of the tree-lined drive. Sigmund sat stroking his dark beard for several more minutes searching for signs of surveillance. It would take Victor another fifteen minutes to reach Berth 4-A. No hurry.
Pavel Danilov, alias “Sigmund,” was a registered nurse, an ambulance driver and a Soviet Jew. He liked being a nurse and an ambulance driver because he liked helping people. He cared nothing about being a Jew, though others did, which was why he was a nurse and not a doctor. And he certainly wasnot an enthusiastic participant of the kind of spy games he played now.
The Forbidden Zone Page 11
