The Masterful Russian (The Masterful Series)

by Cordelia Gregory

  He could feel her heart pounding against him with her frustration at not being able to move and continue her pursuit of the two girls.

  “I have to go to them. I have let them down,” she whispered against his chest as Gabriel smoothed his hands up and down her back.

  “Shh,” he whispered kissing the top of her head. “You can’t go anywhere until you are healed. We have agents looking for them,” he told her softening his voice, moving his hands down her arms now. He wanted to somehow transfer some of his strength so she would feel both soothed and protected by his gentle touch.

  Gabriel was relieved when she allowed her head to fall defeated on his shoulder. Finally, she was resigning herself to her captivity in the Palazzo and her bed.

  “Antonia, you haven’t let anyone down. You can’t do this anymore on your own,” he said softly sweeping his hand down her blonde hair lying on her shoulders. “Now, I am going to put you back to bed and get you some tea and food. Then you are going to tell me everything that happened in The Hole with the girls and I am going to help you identify the man you saw preaching to the men in the refugee camp and radicalizing them.”

  She lifted her head up a little way from his shoulder and nodded. She gave a small sniff and allowed the Russian agent to slip his arm underneath her legs and lift her up into his arms. She clung to him like a child as he carried her back to the bed and carefully lowered her back down on it, gently tucking the covers around her. Antonia grimaced as she laid her head back on the pillows and grimaced as she wriggled around trying to get comfortable on her sore backside. She dipped her hand underneath the covers and rubbed it making him smile.

  He leaned over her and stroked his fingers across her damp cheek to wipe away her tears before gently cupping the side of her face.

  “Trust me. Allow me to do my job and protect you, Antonia. I will find the girls and keep you safe. I won’t let you down,” he promised.

  “And if I don’t, will you spank me like a child again?” There was a hint of fear in her tone.

  He continued his soothing caress and looked deep into her eyes so she would see the strength of his resolve even though they captivated him and held him prisoner.

  “If I have to.” His voice was a dark velvet caress. His words made her eyes widen and her pupils dilate before he added, “Somebody needs to tame and control your recklessness concerning your safety. Are you going to give me cause to?”

  “I will try not to. But I can’t promise. I find it extremely hard to trust anyone, especially men.”

  The challenge was there in her words. Her fight was returning.

  He nodded wondering why she could not bring herself to have confidence in a man, but now was not the time. He had to prove he was the exception to the men she had encountered in her private and professional life.

  Gabriel placed his thumb on her bottom lip and caressed it back and forth. He heard her become breathless with his intimate touch and felt triumphant.

  “As long as you try. I will prove any faith you put in me to help you find the girls and bring Adalina to justice. You have my word.”

  She turned her eyes away and he got the feeling she wasn’t convinced. He couldn’t help but smile. He would make her learn.

  “What am I doing in Venice?” she asked.

  “Adalina is hiding with her family here. We need you to help us find her and the girls who may still be here.”

  Gabriel removed his thumb and moved away from the bed. He picked up his mobile from the arm of the chair and, using the number he had been given, rang for the doctor to come back in. He glanced back to make sure she wasn’t trying to get out of bed again. Hopefully, the spanking had done the trick and he had gotten through to her. Malinov was always true to his word. If she hadn’t given up he would have tied one of her wrists to the raised metal bars with his belt to keep her there. It wouldn’t be the first time he had done it to a woman who wouldn’t do as she was told when he was trying to protect her.

  Twenty minutes later, Antonia was sitting up in bed and both Gabriel, Botelli and another male agent sat around her bed. The interview was being recorded.

  “I went undercover in the refugee camp at the beginning of July and I stayed there for a month in total. It took me ages to clear it with Duncan Brown, the editor of The Oracle.”

  Antonia raised her eyes to the ceiling with frustration and shook her head.

  “He wasn’t very happy about me going in The Hole after the reports of rape and abuse to women. But I eventually won him over and persuaded him not to send one of the male journalists in my place and on my story.”

  “Who was your source?” Botelli asked with the coldness of an automaton ignoring the tinge of anger in Antonia’s voice.

  The journalist gave a sigh and tried to move on her side in bed to make herself more comfortable still feeling the hot burn from her bottom. She narrowed her eyes at the handsome Russian agent when she caught the twitch of a smile at the corners of his mouth.

  Botelli lifted her wrist and glanced at her Rolex with irritation. Antonia gave her a haughty annoyed look in return.

  “Julia Twain. She was one of the senior aid workers for International Refugee Crisis Management who have set up a lot of the refugee camps in Europe and the one in Marzello. I met her after I did a series on the plight of the refugees in the camp everyone calls ‘The Jungle’ in Calais France for YouTube. She approached me in Paris after watching the series and asked to talk to me about the camp at Marzello. We had a coffee at a café…”

  “Did you video her interview?” Gabriel interrupted.

  “No. I met her alone without my crew.”

  “Date, time, place,” Botelli snapped.

  “I think it was Wednesday no, Thursday the 20th June around 9:30 am, possibly 9:45 at La Petit Angel in Montmartre.”

  Botelli spoke in Italian to the agent on her left. He stood quickly to leave the room.

  “We will see if we can find some CCTV footage of your interview.”

  Antonia’s eyes suddenly swelled with tears. But she kept them locked inside her eyes and her composure in check.

  “Adalina Morelli told me she had been found hanging in her apartment the day I went into the camp. The police believe it was suicide but I have no doubt in my mind it was murder.”

  She rubbed her eyes and tried to blink back an escaping tear. Her voice was hardened with determination when she spoke again.

  “We needed Adalina’s support to allow me to enter the camp but Julia secretly told me she wasn’t convinced the woman was managing the camp well. She believed Adalina was involved in the disappearances and was being paid to look the other way.”

  Antonia tried to sit up and reach for a glass of water from the stand next to the hospital bed. She grimaced with pain prompting Gabriel to rise to his feet and hand it to her. He took the opportunity of rearranging her pillows before helping her to sit back earning himself an impatient look from Botelli.

  “Julia told me women were disappearing from the camp. It was easy for them to. Records of people coming into the camp are poor. It is overwhelmed and at crisis point. Families had reported that a group of men slipped into the camp at night posing as refugees but they were Italian. They carried guns and the refugees were afraid of them. They invaded the tents and kidnapped young women. But what was even more disturbing was when the families cried out for help to the soldiers guarding the perimeter fence they turned their backs on them and pretended not to hear them.”

  Angry passion rose feverishly in Antonia’s voice at the injustice. She was trying to keep her fury under wraps but it was desperate to escape and explode out into the air. Antonia put a shaky hand to her head and took a breath to calm her rage.

  “These men are more than likely working for the Mafia,” Gabriel said trying to give her a moment.

  Botelli nodded.

  “Julia and some of the other aid workers at the camp informed me that Morelli was turning a blind eye to drugs being sold in the camp an
d a host of other illegal practices to get money. She was using the profit to buy extra blankets, food and other necessary items for the refugees. The weight of the increasing responsibility was causing her to have a breakdown and her solution to the crisis was to sacrifice some of the refugees to help as many of the others as she could.”

  Antonia took another gulp of water.

  The tears she was trying to hold back tumbled out of Antonia’s eyes unexpectedly. Botelli bent her head for a moment, but when she raised it her face was as cold and hard as before, so much so it made the lines on her attractive face deepen and crease.

  “She needs a break,” Gabriel suddenly snapped.

  Antonia was exhausted and needed to rest even if it was just for five minutes before they continued her interrogation. But Botelli appeared determined to step up the process and gather the information she needed rather than stop.

  “What happened to Nazila and Qaifa? The girls you were protecting. Were they kidnapped? Who do you believe took them and why?” Botelli questioned, ignoring Gabriel.

  Antonia’s face paled and she became silent.

  Botelli’s eyes widened with impatience and then she turned to the leather-bound folder she had on her lap. The Italian United Global Defence chief opened the folder and took out a photograph. She stood and handed it to Antonia.

  “Is this the man who took them? Is this the man who raped you?” she demanded harshly.

  Chapter 8

  The face on the photograph was one she would never forget until the day she died. Aalam El Hashem was a man she wished she had never had the misfortune of coming across. He was a fundamentalist and a jihadist fighter from IS who had infiltrated ‘The Hole’ to radicalize male youth and recruit them as fighters.

  He conducted meetings in his tent during the day and evening. Implanting grievances about the West’s treatment of Muslims inside the young men’s heads when they should have received encouragement for starting their new lives in another country.

  The first day she encountered him, Antonia was walking back with the girls from the small shop in the camp with some bottles of water, bread, pasta and sauce to feed little Nazila and Qaifa. She had been in the camp for a month now and was looking forward to leaving soon. Antonia was just waiting for the girls’ papers and passports to come through as Adalina had promised she would help organize. There were no further leads in her investigation at present. She was looking forward to the article, she had been secretly writing in her tent, being published. And to uploading the video diary, she had secretly kept, to YouTube.

  Antonia was drained and exhausted from living in the camp. Eating had been difficult because supplies had been low and her focus was on keeping the girls well fed. She did not sleep and was constantly on guard.

  It had been raining again the previous night and the mud was thick and difficult to walk through, making Antonia’s movements feel lethargic. Mud and dirt were not her favourite things and having to be so entrenched in them made her nauseous. She was screaming for a hot shower in her hotel room and not having to take her life in her hands with the water in the unisex shower block. And she was dreaming of getting back into her normal clothes.

  That day, the Burqa was feeling more suffocating than usual. She hated the way the material rubbed her face and her breath was confined in the small space covering her mouth. It made her sweat in the humid climate.

  Her mind drifted once more to thoughts about the possibility of getting the girls adopted and creating a new life for them as she walked back from the camp shop clutching each girl’s hand. She remembered the morning she met them. It was her second day in the camp. She’d come outside to covertly snap some shots of the conditions in the camp on her iPhone when she heard a raised girl’s voice shouting at two boys.

  Qaifa was bravely attempting to fend off a boy who was taunting and bullying both herself and the small girl crying and hiding behind her. Qaifa Nejem was defiantly pushing the taller older boy away every time he advanced towards them while a second boy poked the little girl in the chest with a stick. She cried out and clung to her sister’s leg.

  The two pretty Syrian girls looked starved in their thin, dirty, dull clothes and headscarves around their heads but there was still fire and determination in Qaifa’s face as she defended her sister.

  Antonia surprised the smaller boy by knocking the stick out of his hand. Then she placed herself between Qaifa and the boy. She told him to leave them alone in Arabic. Antonia shoved him back away from the girls so hard he fell backwards and landed in the muddy walkway between the rows of tents. He stood up quickly full of anger cursing at her. He produced a penknife from his pocket and flicked it open. He came towards her, his intention to knife her.

  Antonia remembered feeling her heart thud like an express train and her chest tighten as she prepared to wrestle the knife away from the boy. She acted fast turning to the side to avoid the thrust of the blade and tightly grabbed his wrist. The journalist painfully twisted his wrist around and put her hand on the top of his arm threatening to break it if he didn’t let go of the knife. As she waited for the boy to capitulate she was conscious of a group of women crowding around watching and whispering. None of them did anything to help and there were no men to shout to in the walkway. They had left early in the morning to find work in the nearby fields with the farmers. She was on her own.

  She gritted her teeth together and twisted harder, thankful she remembered enough of the move from the self-defence classes she took with her friend at the end of the previous year. The boy yelped and growled falling down on his knees. When she increased the pressure just a touch more, he finally gave up and dropped the knife. She let go and quickly picked up the knife putting it in the pocket of the long skirt she wore under the Burqa.

  “Didn’t your mother tell you not to play with knives and bully little girls!” she told him.

  The boy stood up and spat at her. She stepped back to avoid it hitting her face and clothes. Antonia prepared herself for more of the boy’s violence but his brother pushed him and urged him to leave.

  Antonia turned and smiled at the girls. The eldest returned a shaky smile. When she questioned them about the whereabouts of their parents Qaifa told her they were alone. She was reluctant to tell the journalist any more. Antonia took them to her tent and vowed to look after them. Women and children on their own in the camp in Calais and in Marzello were prone to being sexually abused and attacked. She’d known the risk when she entered The Hole and on the first day she discovered the reality.

  Dangerously, Antonia had taken a walk around the camp alone at night. Undetected a man came up behind her and tried to drag her into his tent. She’d fought him with all her strength trying to remove his arm from around her neck as he pulled her backwards. He’d thrown her on the floor of the tent. A jagged stone underneath the ground sheet poked into her back and between her ribs making her cry out. But the man paid her cry no attention. When she tried to sit up he punched her face. Dazed she fell backwards. The man lowered himself down on top of her, his trousers gaping open. That was when she brought her knee up into his groin as hard and as fast as she could.

  The man gave a high-pitched wail and rolled off her. Hurriedly, Antonia scrabbled to her feet and rushed out of the tent. The experience made her run back to her tent and vomit.

  The thought of this fate befalling the girls terrified the young journalist and she insisted they reside in the tent with her and made sure they were accompanied by her wherever they went. If she could not be there she made sure the girls barricaded themselves in the tent and did not venture out.

  Antonia was unable to keep up the pretence of being a Syrian woman and was forced to reveal her identity and age to the girls. To her relief the girls appeared to relax more and were willing to keep it secret. Qaifa opened up and revealed that she and her sister had made the treacherous journey from Syria to Marzello on their own to avoid being given as child brides to men twice their age.

  Escaping
from their home at night with a little money stolen from their parents while they slept, Qaifa and her small sister had travelled from their small village in Syria on foot and by train on their own to Cairo. From Cairo, they had made their way to Alexandria and had enough money left to pay the smugglers for a place on one of the boats travelling to Marzello in Italy.

  They had been abused and threatened on their perilous journey but had made it to the refugee camp. Their heart-rending story had provided the backdrop to her article and prompted her to find out more about the disappearances of the girls in the camp.

  Antonia continued walking with the girls. They made the same route every day and it involved going past the fundamentalist’s tent. The women had talked about him while they cooked outside around the fire. He had made a hazardous journey from Libya and was now providing good spiritual support to the young men around the camp helping them find work with the local farmers to support their families while they waited for their papers to be processed. They had made him sound a force for good.

  There had been no adverse reports or even a hint of radicalisation claims amongst the men either. But the fear was still in Antonia whether she cared to admit it or not that he might be an IS terrorist recruiting undercover. As a westerner, she was becoming paranoid but then IS had recently threatened to send fighters through the refugee camps to arrange terrorist attacks all over Europe and she wondered if she could be blamed for thinking that way.

  But the man never appeared to be outside of his tent until today. He was having a discussion with two Ethiopian men and handing them leaflets. Antonia frowned wondering how he had been able to afford having leaflets made. She wanted to get her hands on one. She made a mental note of his tent and its position before continuing on her way. As she walked she began devising a plan in her head to return in the evening and see if she could somehow listen in to one of the many prayer meetings he held.