By Any Means

by Chris Culver

  “Yep,” said Davis, walking past his officers. He pulled the poster back like a door, exposing a cavity in the wall. Ash heard whispers coming from inside.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “Take a look, Detective.”

  Ash stepped around the sheriff and hesitated before putting his head past the poster. The cavity opened into a small room with a bare bulb light fixture and thin carpet. A number of young women in pajamas huddled in the corner.

  “Hi, ladies,” he said, unsure what else to say. A couple of the girls closest to the door pressed back on those behind them, trying to get away from him. Ash took the hint and backed off himself. Davis nodded at him when he emerged.

  “Tell me that’s why you called me here and that you didn’t find anything worse.”

  “That’s why we called you.”

  “Did you try coaxing them out yet?”

  “We tried speaking to them in Spanish, English, and German. They didn’t respond, and nobody here speaks anything else. I’ve got a couple of female officers on the way. We’re hoping they might have more success than we’ve had.”

  Ash nodded. “Can I try something first?”

  “Go right ahead.”

  Ash stuck his head back in the room and cast his gaze over the women again.

  They huddled and trembled together like a pack of frightened animals.

  “As-salamu alaykum.”

  Peace be upon you. It was the standard greeting given by Muslims around the world. Given that there were a billion and a half Muslims worldwide, Ash thought it was worth a shot. Two girls stepped forward, clinging to each other. The oldest could have been in college, but the other girl was probably fifteen or sixteen. Both wore pajamas, and both cried against the other’s chest so their words came out distorted.

  “Walaikum salam.”

  And peace be upon you. Ash looked over his shoulder at the officers outside.

  “We’re going to need some backup.”

  15

  Voroshilovsk, Ukraine, 1954.

  The cell stunk of sweat, excrement, and mildew. Most men stayed for a day or two before being tried or executed, but Kostya had already been there for a full week. The men he had been arrested with had already come and gone, having been able to afford the necessary bribes to the appropriate guards. They had probably returned to work, peddling illegal wares to those men and women fortunate enough to be able to afford a few luxury items.

  Kostya, meanwhile, sat on the ground with his back against a brick wall, watching as guards patrolled the hallway outside. He had been arrested for purchasing strawberries, a birthday present for his sister, from a black market dealer in Voroshilovsk. Most likely they had been split among the men who arrested him and eaten on the spot.

  Two men sat across from him in the cell, but he didn’t bother trying to talk to them. Dirt and sweat caked their faces so thoroughly that he couldn’t even determine their ethnicity. He had seen several men like them come during the past week; by now, those men had been executed or sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia. Kostya felt a little surprised that hadn’t happened to him yet. It happened to prisoners unable to pay, and he saw little point in fighting a system meant to degrade, humiliate, and dehumanize him at every step.

  He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, knowing he might get few chances for real rest in the future. Before sleep could overtake him, though, someone inserted a key into the cell door’s lock and swung the door open.

  “Get up, Kostya.”

  He recognized the voice before opening his eyes, having heard it at least once a week for the better part of ten years. Vladimir Orlesky. In one way or another, Vladimir had been part of the state security apparatus for all of Kostya’s life. When Kostya moved to his aunt and uncle’s farm when he was eleven, Vladimir had been a part of the MGB. Since Stalin’s death, though, that ministry had been merged with another to form the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the MVD. Though the names changed, the mission didn’t: protect the dictatorship of the Communist Party through any means necessary. Vladimir may have been following orders, but that didn’t make him any less repugnant.

  Kostya’s eyes fluttered open to take in his captor.

  “Congratulations on surviving the great purge so far,” he said. “I thought you of all people would be exterminated in the first wave.”

  A grimace formed on Vladimir’s face. Although little had happened in the Ukraine yet, newspapers sponsored by the Communist Party reported on the trials of several former secret police officers who had been arrested in Moscow for putting the interests of their organization and themselves above the party and government. Once the party finished parading them about the country as an example, they’d be shot. Everyone knew it, including them.

  “You’re very talkative for someone in a cell.”

  Kostya shrugged. “I have nowhere to go. I’ve accepted my fate. Nothing I can do will change that.”

  “At least you know your place.”

  Kostya closed his eyes again. “What do you want?”

  “You’re a smart boy, I’m told. Your aunt speaks highly of you. She says you want to be a doctor.”

  “As long as I’m in your cell, it doesn’t matter what I want. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “If you were released right now, what would you do?”

  Kostya opened his eyes and crossed his arms. “Why are you wasting my time? We both know what’s going to happen. I’ll have a trial, and men whose crimes are blacker than any I’ve ever even contemplated will pronounce me guilty of buying my sister a birthday present. They’ll send me to prison, and you’ll go on doing whatever you want. I’m tired of it, and I’m tired of playing along.”

  “You’re free to go.”

  Kostya scoffed. “You want to shoot me in the back and call it an escape attempt?”

  “If I wanted you dead, I wouldn’t need the excuse. I’d shoot you in the head here. Now stand up and go.”

  Kostya eyed him for a moment, but then pushed himself off the wall and stood. “What is this?”

  “A pardon in lieu of your family’s extraordinary services to the state.”

  Kostya felt his shoulders fall. He didn’t have any famous leaders or soldiers in his family, just an aunt who cared enough about him to sacrifice herself for his safety.

  “Myra did this?”

  Vladimir shook his head and reached into his pocket for a strip of tattered cloth. Kostya recognized the fabric immediately; he used to have an identical bit before Vladimir confiscated it several years earlier. It had come from the dress his mother wore before she died. Anastasiya had the only other strip in existence, and she wouldn’t have let it out of her sight if she could help it.

  “Your aunt was unavailable. Return this to your sister and apologize on behalf of my men. Some of them can be…demanding.”

  Kostya’s hands shook, but he tried to keep the revulsion from his voice. “What did you do to her?”

  “We gave her a birthday present.”

  For a moment, Kostya couldn’t speak. He wanted to hit him, to strike back with everything he had. Vladimir wanted that, though; he would have sent an underling if he didn’t. Kostya’s vision clouded as moisture sprang to his eyes. He blinked it away and held his breath to choke the emotion from his voice.

  “My family has never done anything to you. I won’t forget this.”

  Vladimir shook his head, the outline of a smile on his lips.

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to go to school and become a doctor, just like your family wants. You’re weak, like your uncle. That’s all you have in you. Your tears betray that as much as anything you could say.”

  Kostya wiped his cheek. “Whatever I am, whatever I have in me, you’ve put there. I will kill you for this.”

  “I sincerely hope to see you try. Now get out. I have real work to do.”

  * * *

  The warehouse had stood in that spot for so long its elaborat
e exterior brickwork and leaded glass windows had become pieces of history. As Kostya stepped inside, the sterile, white paint that covered every surface in the building reflected and magnified the artificially bright light from the overhead lamps. Just five years ago, two hundred workers in that plant pumped out fifty thousand meals ready to eat for the U.S. military every day, but with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more or less over, the factory’s output had slowed and then stopped completely. The U.S. military still paid for the space, but one of Kostya’s companies owned the building. Other, active industrial sites surrounded them, but no workers had stepped into Kostya’s building in several months; they wouldn’t have guests anytime soon.

  Lev opened a metal folding chair for Kostya beside a drain in the concrete floor.

  “Thank you. Please bring her in.”

  Lev nodded and directed his boys to follow him back to their van. Kostya didn’t relish committing violence, but he understood its utility when applied judiciously. He needed information that Ann had, and while she may not be receptive to his entreaties yet, she would be with the right motivation. When Lev returned, he carried an unconscious Ann over his shoulder while his son Michael wheeled in a sturdy wooden swivel chair. Lev put her in the chair and Michael secured her arms and legs to the frame with white zip ties, ensuring that she couldn’t move. James, meanwhile, wheeled in a pressurized gas cylinder with attached tubing and bright yellow mask. Once his son had the apparatus set up, Lev broke a packet of smelling salts open and held it beneath Ann’s nose. She jerked awake immediately as the aroma of ammonia permeated the surroundings. Her eyes shot around the room, wide and terrified.

  “Where am I?”

  “Nowhere you’ve ever been before, I’m sure,” said Kostya. “I thought we could talk here uninterrupted.”

  Ann’s nostrils flared as she exhaled, but the fear in her eyes subsided somewhat, as did her heavy breathing.

  “What do you want?”

  “Information.”

  “I don’t know anything.”

  Kostya frowned. “That’s what you said earlier. I had hoped you would reconsider.”

  Ann used her feet to inch the chair toward Kostya, but stopped when one of the wheels hit the drain embedded into the floor.

  “I have money in a safe at the inn. If you let me go, it’s yours. Almost two hundred thousand dollars.”

  Kostya shook his head. “I’m not interested in your money.”

  “My employers can give you more. A million dollars. Cash. It’s yours if you let me go.”

  Kostya pretended to consider before shaking his head. “No. I appreciate the offer, but I’ve already got enough money. Who are your employers?”

  Ann straightened. “If you kill me, you’ll find out when they come after your family.”

  Kostya looked at his brother-in-law. “Considering my family, I’ll take my chances.”

  She flinched and tried to back off. “What do you want with me?”

  “Just information, as I said.”

  “Then ask me a question.”

  “I’m glad you’re agreeable. This is normally so much more difficult. Tell me,” said Kostya, leaning so close to Ann that he could smell the remnants of her perfume. “What did Kara Bukoholov do for you?”

  “I don’t know Kara Bukoholov.”

  “Kara Elliot.”

  Ann didn’t say anything. Kostya leaned back and stood up slowly, his knees hurting.

  “When I was nineteen, my little sister and I were sent to a forced labor camp in Siberia. MVD officers took me from college.” Kostya looked at Lev. “It’s where I met my future brother-in-law, actually.”

  “Charming family history,” said Ann.

  Kostya chuckled. “I was a janitor when I was there, so I cleaned the interrogation rooms. I saw guards beat prisoners with sticks, shock them with electrodes, inject them with drugs. They were cruel men.”

  “Are you telling me this to scare me?”

  “No,” said Kostya. “I don’t have the stomach to do those sorts of things. Besides, those weren’t designed to get someone to talk. There were limited recreation opportunities, so the guards took whatever they could get.”

  “They sound lovely.”

  Kostya smiled. “To break someone, they were more methodical. One guard in particular was smarter than the others. He recognized that psychological pain was, in many ways, even worse than physical pain. I remember one morning in particular. He ordered me to help him strap a man to a table and then force him to swallow a long rag. While I watched, the guard then put the other end of the rag in a bucket of water suspended from the ceiling. Every time the prisoner took a breath, water would slide down that rag and into his lungs, drowning him over the course of hours. The prisoner knew he was killing himself and couldn’t do anything about it. You do that to a man and then revive him enough times, he’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

  Ann looked around.

  “I don’t see a bucket of water here.”

  “No, of course not,” said Kostya, motioning his nephew James forward. “I don’t have that kind of time.”

  James wheeled the canister forward and stopped behind Ann. She flinched as he secured the rubber mask over her mouth and nose. She held her breath for about a minute after he turned on the gas, but when she inhaled, she shuddered and Kostya could hear the chair creak as she fought the restraints.

  “It’s just carbon dioxide. If you talk, it won’t hurt you permanently.”

  Kostya nodded to his nephew after thirty more seconds. James killed the gas and removed the mask from her face. She slumped forward, gasping.

  “You know why I use the gas?” Ann tilted her head back and spit at him. Kostya took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his shoulder. “We used to use a pillow, but people would bite their lips, thrash their heads around and bite us. It was too much work. This is much more humane, don’t you think?”

  She spit at him again. “I told you. I don’t know Kara Elliot.”

  “I think you do, and I had hoped this would be easier,” said Kostya, nodding toward his nephew. James put the mask on again. Instead of releasing her thirty seconds after she took her first breath, though, he kept the mask on for a full minute. She fought even harder, but the chair and restraints held. As she gasped and panted afterward, Kostya had James put the air on again. She didn’t last long before passing out, so Lev had to use the smelling salts on her again to wake her up. When she woke, red tinged the whites of her eyes, her capillaries having burst.

  “My partners are going to find you and kill you,” she said between gasps.

  “Threats without the possibility of action are pointless. I don’t want to do this to you, but I need to find out what happened to my daughter. Tell me and this will end.”

  Ann narrowed her eyes. “No.”

  “So be it,” said Kostya, nodding toward his nephew. They continued gassing her and then reviving her for about half an hour. Unlike earlier, though, Kostya didn’t give her the opportunity to talk. Eventually, she started crying and shaking even with the gas off.

  “Talk to me. Tell me what I want to know, and this will be over. Nod if you agree.”

  She shuddered and then nodded, so James took the mask off her face. She breathed deeply, tears streaming freely down her cheeks. None of the men said anything, but Kostya leaned forward and wiped her tears away with a handkerchief.

  “I didn’t want to do that. Please understand, this isn’t personal. I don’t like to hurt people.”

  Ann’s lips moved, but no sound emerged. Kostya glanced at one of his nephews.

  “Give her some water.”

  Michael cut the zip tie from one of Ann’s arms and handed her a bottle of water. She drank and held it against her forehead.

  “How did you know my daughter?”

  Ann didn’t say anything. Kostya looked over his shoulder at his nephew.

  “Put the mask on her again.”

  “Kara worked for us,” sai
d Ann quickly. “She and her husband took care of our money.”

  Kostya blinked and took a deep breath. “How did she take care of your money?”

  “Our business is mostly cash. She worked with investment banks and other companies so we could put it in the bank.”

  “So she laundered it.”

  Ann didn’t respond. At least that explained why Kara didn’t go to the police with Iskra.

  “Did she know how you earned your money?” asked Kostya.

  “Not at first, but her husband found out, and then papers and documents started going missing. When they stopped working with us, we didn’t know what to do. We thought they were working with the government. When Daniel, Kara’s husband, took Iskra, we knew we had to do something.”

  “You decided to kill them.”

  “Not us. My boss did.”

  “What’s his name?”

  Ann shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve never met him. He tells me where to go to find new girls and arranges for me to bring them back to the U.S.”

  “What about the money?”

  “We send half of everything we earn via wire transfer to an account in the Cayman Islands.”

  “Surely you know something about your employer, a name at least.”

  She started to say something, but then stopped. “His name is Lukas. He’s from Chicago. That’s all I know.”

  “Are you sure that’s all you know?”

  She paused.

  “He has an accent. I think he’s German.”

  “What else?”

  “That’s it. I’ve never met him in person or seen a picture, and I don’t know anything else. I work with the girls and manage the bed-and-breakfast. I don’t deal with security.”

  Kostya had always found it curious when he ran across people who went into business with strangers. You couldn’t trust someone you didn’t know.

  “Thank you for your help,” said Kostya, standing.

  Ann inched forward on her chair, her face drawn. “I told you what I know,” she said. “Please let me go.”

  Kostya took a step back and glanced at Lev. “Get rid of her.”

  While Lev removed a firearm from his pocket, Kostya walked toward the warehouse’s exit. The shot that silenced Ann echoed in the warehouse but would be muffled by the building’s thick walls, ensuring none of the neighbors heard. Kostya had bought it for that very feature. He may not have been able to get much out of Ann, but he could at least be assured that she wouldn’t be running a bed-and-breakfast again anytime soon.