by Jack Norman
“When did you last see Vadim Kasharin?” he asked casually, tearing her dress from neck to waist and then yanking her bra away.
She sat in shock, not attempting to cover her full breasts as they tumbled free.
“I saw him a few days ago,” she said, her voice so quiet that it was almost inaudible.
“I can’t hear you.”
“I saw Vadim a few days ago,” she said, more clearly.
Salko nodded in satisfaction. “Very well, get naked.”
“What?”
“I always want women naked when I interview them. Do it!”
Her eyes flashed in terror but she eased her butt from the seat and pushed her skirt down over her hips. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”
“I’m sure you will. Strip.” He started the engine of the car. “If you know what’s good for you, you will be butt naked by the time I leave this car park.”
He eased the car down the queue of parked cars and turned towards the exit. Raisa’s last garment hit the floor as the car swept out onto the road. Salko glanced at her. She was in good shape, with nice big tits and a reasonably trim waist.
“Vadim Kasharin... Where will we find him at this time of day?”
“He works the clubs at night. He’s probably still in bed.”
Salko smiled mirthlessly as he cast another sideways glance at her, and he turned the car onto the wide main drag through Moscow. There had been a time when he too was happy to languish in bed until midday. Now though, following years in Russian jails where guards routinely beat the prisoners awake with cudgels, he always woke early and alert.
“How old are you, Mrs Latynina?”
“I’m thirty-four,” she said.
“You are in good shape. And where is your husband?”
She hesitated before replying, and then said, “He’s probably dead. I don’t know for sure.”
“So, there’s no Mr Poda waiting at home, huh?”
“My mother and brother will report me missing. Where are you taking me?”
He realised that her mind was beginning to work again. That was impressive. Grabbing and stripping a woman in broad daylight usually fazes her for some time.
“I’m taking you to some people I know. By tomorrow evening you’ll be working on your back in a brothel in Israel servicing the rough migrant trade. They’ll pay me a poor price because of your age, but I will keep your nice new car.”
Raisa Poda vainly tried the door handle, even though she was naked and the car was travelling at more than 50kph. The door was locked, of course.
“I have money. Drive me to an ATM and I will give you all my money if you let me go.”
Salko looked across at her and smiled, reaching across to heft her breast in the palm of his hand. . “Thirty-four.... That’s a bit old for the traffickers, but not too old. They’ll get a few years work out of you until you’re a disease raddled whore.” He was silent for a while, as if concentrating on his driving, but occasionally he cast a sideways glance at her, assessing her state of mind. “Do you have your passport with you?” he finally asked.
“No, of course not,” she said. “Why are you doing this?”
“You know the sex trafficking trade,” he said with a shrug. “You are involved in it yourself, after all.”
“No!”
He slammed on brakes and the sudden forward-thrust nearly forced her head against the windscreen. “Yes, Mrs Poda!” he said, easing the car forward again and glancing in the rear view mirror at the long blare of a horn from the vehicle behind. “You lure girls to parties.”
She swallowed hard. After a couple of seconds, she said: “So that is what this is all about. I only did that a few times. I am paid to persuade attractive girls to go to private parties for wealthy businessmen. There is no crime in that. The girls have a good time, they like parties. What they choose to do there is up to them. I’m not their mother.”
“How do you get paid? How much?”
“I collect my money at the party. It depends how many girls I introduce.”
“I can imagine,” Salko said grimly, slowing his speed again. The traffic was getting congested up yonder, where the road veered to the right. He pulled into the lane of crawling vehicles. “I could hand you over to the police, of course. On the other hand, I prefer the poetic justice of killing you or selling you as a naked whore. So I warn you, Mrs Poda, you have until we reach the M8 highway to give me information and convince me... after that, it’s the point of no return and you’ll need to learn Hebrew. Who commissioned you to lure the girls?
“Lure!” she murmured, biting her lip, but he noted that she didn’t challenge his use of the word. “Different people contact me to make the arrangements. Some I recognise, others I don’t. I thought that’s why you had come to see me.”
“Put your feet up on the dash and spread your legs.”
“We’re in busy traffic,” she protested but, seeing his hard look, she obeyed. Her partly-shaven pussy was openly displayed in the low sports car. A large truck was beside them and the driver looked down at her. She closed her eyes. “Oh my God!”
“You know the Englishman?” Salko asked again, reaching to pat the gash of her sex and slipping his third finger inside her. “You are wet.”
“I don’t know any Englishman,” she said, closing her eyes against the violation.
“Tell me about Kasharin.”
“I knew Vadim Kasharin from when he was a student... Oh!” She paused with an involuntary exclamation as Salko expertly manipulated her clitoris. “He introduced me to the main organiser, a woman they call Tara.”
The truck driver sounded his horn and the traffic began to move again. His finger moved to press on the rose of her anus.
“Tara?”
“I don’t know her well, other than that she always pays me in US dollars at the parties.” Raisa grunted as Salko’s finger pushed into her arse. “Believe me, that’s all I know.”
“You simply delivered the girls, collected your money and then you left?”
“I arranged in advance for most of the women to go to the party, and checked their addresses, that kind of thing. Sometimes, though, I met more girls by chance and took them with me. I got a bonus.”
“And Anna Borzov?”
“Someone was particularly keen to meet her at the party.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. Tara, I suppose.”
The car up ahead halted, skewed across the lane, flashing his indicator light, the driver’s arm raised from the open window with one finger aloft. Salko growled and, steering one-handed with the finger of his other hand up Raisa Poda’s arse, turned the Mercedes into the narrow gap beside the vehicle, squeezing past but scraping the paintwork along the rear corner of a large truck. He shrugged and looked across at Raisa, who merely winced and braced her splayed legs as his finger jabbed harder up her anus,
“Fucking drivers!” he said, moving forward again. “So you went to the parties, collected your money, and then immediately left.”
“Yes, of course. I have no interest in parties or in sleeping with rich businessmen.”
“You left before the girls were drugged and kidnapped.”
“I had no idea—.”
“You lie, Raisa.” He pushed his thumb into her cunt, leaning over to shake her by her entire sexual delta. “What did you think happened to them?”
Raisa began to weep. “It wasn’t my concern,” she said.
“Those girls will all be working as forced prostitutes now. I went to the apartment in Kropotkin Street... there was a party there a couple of weeks ago. You remember?” He glanced across and saw her eyes flash in recognition. “You won’t be surprised to know that the apartment was empty when I checked. It was rented for the one night only.”
“They use a different apartment each time. Look, I have nothing to do with these people. I’m just a teacher, earning some extra money in my spare time.”
The traffic was sudd
enly moving more freely and Salko removed his hand from her body, wiping it on her belly. He urged the Mercedes forward. “You’ll earn even more money where you’re going, but you won’t get to spend it yourself. Only a few minutes before we reach the M8, Mrs Poda... That gaping pussy of yours is soon going to get plenty of action.”
“I’ll show you where Vadim Kasharin lives,” she suddenly blurted.
III
“It’s here,” Raisa Poda said as Salko drove round the corner. “Vadim Kasharin runs the Swing bar half way along this street. There, on the right. He’s usually at the bar about this time.”
“Brace yourself,” Salko said as he accelerated the Mercedes towards the double doors.
“What are you doing?” she yelled, her feet braced on the dashboard. “Are you crazy?”
“As mad as hell,” he growled as the car smashed through the doors and right into the bar area of the club, hitting a man who had been drinking at one of the tables. A young man, fashionably unshaven, cowered down behind the bar. “Is that Kasharin?”
“No,” Raisa breathed, slumped back with her legs widely-spread, wide-eyed as if in a trance. “You just drove the car into him.”
“Shit!”
Salko took stock of the situation. It seemed there had only been three people in the bar. After a few seconds, a young man raised his head tentatively above the bar counter. Salko took this as his cue to open the door and climb out of the wrecked car.
“Are you hurt?” the bare breasted young woman asked.
“No, no, I’m fine, thank you,” Salko said, kicking aside a broken table and reaching for the man sprawled on the floor. “Mr Kasharin?”
“My fucking leg! I think my knee’s broken.”
“Vadim Kasharin?” Salko asked, grabbing the limp leg by the knee, where the jeans were already soaked in blood..
“Yes, but my leg—” His words broke off with a strangled scream.
“This knee?” Salko asked innocently, twisting the shattered limb and waiting for the ensuing scream to die in the air. He then calmly drew his gun from his inner pocket and pressed the muzzle against Kasharin’s other knee.
“You won’t be dancing at any parties for a while, Vadim.”
Kasharin howled in terror, and this was a cue for the young barman to vault over bar counter and sprint out of the carnage of the bar. Salko glanced over his shoulder briefly and glanced at Raisa Poda who was still sitting numbly in the car. He then returned his attention to his howling victim. “I want some information, Vadim Kasharin,” he said, easing back the safety catch on the pistol. “Otherwise you’ll have two smashed legs. Tell me about the party in Kropotkin Street a few days ago.”
“I don’t know anything about any fucking party, man. Get me to a hospital—.” He cringed back as Salko fired a bullet into the floor. “Fuck!”
“You have a choice, Vadim,” Salko said, and for emphasis he smashed the side of the pistol against Kasharin’s face, smashing his nose and spraying blood. “Give me some information or the next bullet goes in your good knee.”
“Tell him, Vadim,” Raisa suddenly said. Salko looked back and saw that she was standing naked beside the car. “He already knows about your last party and that some girls went missing.”
“I do, I do,” Salko said, wiping the blood and snot from the gun onto Kasharin’s shirt. “But I want to know everything, Vadim. Who takes the girls, where they go, which route... everything. And don’t try to scam a player. I’m prone to violence.”
“Alright, alright... I’ll tell you. The main woman is Tara. She organises the parties and usually just wants pretty students. This time though, she was very particular. She wanted Anna Borzov.”
“Tell me where I can find Tara,” Salko said grimly.
When Vadim Kasharin had spilled everything he knew, Salko put a bullet in the back of his neck. It was an efficient and cold execution, leaving little extra blood and gore. He then turned to point the gun at Raisa Poda.
“I knew you would kill me,” she said calmly.
“No,” he said, “I’m sending you off to Israel.”
IV
A grizzled old man arrived to clean a hotel room. Hs gnarled, heavily tattooed hands carried a large canvas bag, which he dropped to the floor as he glanced in dispassionate appraisal at the corpse, assessing the job in hand. The woman, although in her forties, had probably been beautiful, even a few hours ago. But Tara was no longer beautiful, not in death. Her blood-stained and lacerated body was still tied hand and foot to the bed, and most of her finger nails had been pulled out. Black cigarette burns, like bullet holes, were scattered on the ghastly blue-white flesh of her breasts. The old man reached to take a rolled leather tool case from the canvas bag and he placed it unopened beside the body on the bed. He then reached into the bag again and took out a large polythene sack and shook it open. He collected up the packet of Marlborough cigarettes and cheap cigarette lighter he found on the bedside cabinet, hesitated, and then slipped them into his pocket rather than dropping them into the sack. From that same pocket he pulled a pair of thin latex gloves, snapping them over his tattooed hands before stooping to collect up the items of intimate female clothing that littered the floor round the bed. He carefully placed each frilled and lacy item into the sack, and then worked methodically across the room to the furthest corner, not missing a centimetre, collecting up everything he found and dropping it into the polythene sack. He found a smart designer dress and an outdoor coat hanging in the wardrobe. These too were stuffed into the sack, along with the pair of red Jimmy Choo shoes he found neatly placed on the floor of the wardrobe. The old man then went on his short, bowed-legs to the en suite bathroom and he removed the few things he found there, including emptying the waste basket.
He then went back to the bedroom, dropped the sack beside the canvas bag, and glanced around to check his own handiwork. No handbag! He walked over to where the corpse lay and dropped on his knees, pulling aside the dishevelled blood stained sheets and peering under the bed. There was nothing there. No handbag! The old man rose painfully to his feet and shrugged, glancing round carefully again, and looking in the bedside cabinet. He would have to enquire about the missing handbag. Perhaps Salko had taken it with him? That seemed unwise. With a sigh, he returned to the canvas bag and took out an aerosol spray and a clean cloth, and then proceeded to clean every door handle and surface that might have been touched.
Once that had been done, the old man returned to the bed and unrolled his leather tool case. He selected a sturdy pair of garden secateurs from the array of tools there. Then, pulling a small plastic bag from his pocket, he moved to the head of the bed and grasped Tara’s blue-tinged right hand where it hung limply in the tight rope bond. Then he began to dispassionately snip off her bloodied fingers, one by one, mindless of the sickening crunch of bone, collecting up each grizzly digit and carefully putting it into the bag.
The door opened as he worked, and he glanced sharply over his shoulder at the two men who entered. “Don’t alarm me like that,” the old man said, snipping off the little finger. “I just need to cut off the fingers from her other hand and pull out her teeth. Then you can take her. There’s no sign of a handbag. A woman like this would surely carry a bag.”
“Why worry?” asked one go the men, lighting a cigarette.
V
“You’re sure that Tara had no more information?” Borzov said, turning slightly in his chair and fondling his paper knife and glancing at Sara, who was tightly bound and kneeling on his desk. She kept her legs widely placed, even though the tie allowed her to close them. It just seemed appropriate.
Leo Salko looked out over Moscow stretching behind Viktor Borzov’s head. He gave a thin smile. “Oh, I’m very certain that Tara told me everything.”
Sara was surprised that she had been allowed to remain for this tense meeting, and yet it seemed that Borzov required her presence. Before Nikitin and Salko had arrived, the Boss had personally supervised Sasha as he restrained
her arms in a box-tie, passing red rope tightly around her chest and upper arms, keeping her arms folded behind her and preventing her from wriggling her wrists free of the tie at the small of her back. Sasha had attached the end of the red rope to a tight matching crotch rope that separated the lips of her cunt and kept her back arched and breasts sharply thrust out. He had finished off with a frog-tie on her legs, tied to bindings on her thighs and just below her knees and just above her ankles. It was impossible for her to stand up. Sara was unclear why Viktor Borzov required her there, bound like some exotic executive desk ornament.
Borzov spun the seat of his chair to directly face the two men and then he turned his head to stare at Sara as he said, “I have been informed of the death of my good friend Professor Zeldov in America. It happened two weeks ago. The news reached me belatedly. He was tortured before he died, so someone presumably wanted information from him.”
Sara gasped. Zeldov had been her language tutor at Cornell, and he had introduced her to Viktor Borzov. Borzov watched her reaction intently.
“What’s that got to do with Anna’s kidnapping?” Nikitin asked.
“I am asking myself the same question, Georgy,” Borzov said, prodding the tip of Sara’s breast with the knife. “You, my girl, are my only recent connection with the Professor. What do you know about it, little bitch?”
