She frowns in thought. “There was a reporter named Akim. That was his code-name, anyway. He actually interviewed me once, on the phone. Akim writes for Reforma. We could call him.”
Oh, the irony.
She doesn’t know. That’s because Ludmilla hides her identity very carefully. Most people believe that “Akim” is a man, and she uses a voice changer to disguise her voice when she interviews people on the phone. When I tracked her down a few months ago and told her about the work that my volunteer group was doing, it took her a long time to trust me.
It never occurred to me not to trust her.
I shake my head.
“The woman who came into the room after the police chief? That was Akim. Her real name is Ludmilla, and that bitch sold us out,” I tell Darya.
Darya looks skeptical. She shakes her head in protest. “No. Akim is a man.”
“I’ve sat right next to her when she was interviewing people on the phone. She uses a voice changer.”
“Are you sure?” she asks. I don’t blame her. I know it sounds crazy.
“Yes, I’m sure. And you know what? My friends and I told Ludmilla we’d be going to Club Hollywood tonight,” I tell Darya. “And now I know how Sergei and his men knew where to find us. She must have told them.”
“Who is Sergei?”
“The big, handsome motherfucking son-of-a-bitch bastard back at the warehouse. The one with the knife scar on his eyebrow.”
Her brows pinch together in dismay. She shakes her head. “So it’s hopeless for your friends? Are you giving up?”
“Never,” I say, stung. “I think if we call the newsroom director at Reforma, he’ll help us. Ludmilla may be corrupt, but I have to believe that the others there don’t know. She must have accepted a huge bribe. There are still some good people there. I’ll ask the lady behind the counter if I can borrow her phone one more time.”
Darya smiles hopefully. “I’m sure it will work! I’m so glad that I met you. You have to tell me more about this group of yours.”
But the relief doesn’t last long. Neither does my belief that there are more good people than bad, even in a desperate, poverty-stricken district like the Pevlova Oblast.
Because now I’m starting to feel dizzy. Too dizzy for it to be just from exhaustion. And the room is spinning and I’m struggling not to vomit.
“The teeaaa…” I slur, trying to move my hands, not sure if I said the words out loud.
The nice, sweet lady behind the counter drugged our tea.
And the room winks out of existence. The world goes dark.
Chapter Four
Someone is shaking me.
“Natasha, wake up!” A woman’s voice chants the words over and over.
Who is Natasha? Who is talking to me? Where am I?
Then unwelcome memory returns. I’m Natasha for now, Darya is talking to me, and I have no idea where I am.
I groan as she helps me sit up. I clutch at the mattress and wait for the room to stop moving. Slowly, my head clears. Mattress. I’m on a bed.
“The door and the windows are locked,” she tells me. “It’s daytime. I don’t know who took us, but I don’t think anyone raped us while we slept.”
“You’re way ahead of me. Give me a minute.” I struggle to my feet and look around. Panic pushes aside my dizziness.
Why are we here? If somebody drugged us and brought us to a strange place, it can’t have been done with good intentions.
But who was behind it?
Leaning against the wall, I take stock of our surroundings.
We’re in a big white room with wooden floors. There are expensive-looking rugs on the floors.
At the far end of the room there’s a bookshelf stretching to the ceiling and stocked with books, there’s a window looking out onto a field of snow and a high chain link fence, and one king-size bed with a soft fluffy blue comforter and piles of pillows.
There are no paintings. There’s a desk that holds a jug of water and two glasses. I’m desperately thirsty; I stumble over and pour myself some. As I gulp the water down, I notice that the cup is plastic, and so is the jug. So we won’t be able to smash them and use the shards as weapons.
No mirrors on the walls.
I’d bet that the window is shatter-proof.
Someone dressed us while we were unconscious. We’re both wearing thin white cotton T-shirts and white yoga pants. I look around the room.
“No shoes,” I say. “No boots. No coats. No closet with any other clothes. The choice of clothing is strategic. If we managed to escape from here, we’d freeze to death in minutes.”
“Very good,” a tinny male voice says, and I’m so startled I drop my glass. Darya stifles a shriek. We look around frantically, but we can’t see where the voice came from. There’s an intercom somewhere, and someone is watching and listening to us – and they want us to know it.
I stifle the urge to pat my head to see if the blades and lock pick have been removed from my extensions. The long, fake brown locks are still hanging past my shoulders, so I might be in luck. But if someone is listening to us, they’re probably also watching us, so I don’t want to give away the location of my weapons.
“Son of a bitch,” Darya says, shaking her head slowly. “These motherfuckers have some fancy gear.”
“Great.” I sit back down on the bed, my knees weak. My stomach is growling with hunger. “I always wanted to be kidnapped by a bunch of fancy men. Nothing worse than a low-class kidnapper.”
Then I hear footsteps approaching, and we both tense up. I hear the clicking of a latch, and the door opens. A tall, lean, dour-faced man in a butler’s uniform stands there.
Wordlessly, he rolls a tray into the room. There are two plates full of stew on the tray, and a loaf of sliced pumpernickel bread. There’s a pot of butter with a butter knife, and bowls of fresh-cut fruit salad.
We eat lunch ravenously, not knowing if it’s going to be our last meal.
We spend the next few hours pacing around the room or reclining on the bed and talking in hushed whispers. There’s a small bathroom, with soap, toothpaste and toothbrushes, but no razors. We each shower quickly, looking around resentfully for video cameras that we can’t see.
While I’m the bathroom, I feel the dark mood descend. The mood that makes me want to bang my head against the ceramic until I see stars, that makes me want to scratch and claw at my flesh until I bleed.
The moods come from nowhere. They come from hell. Or my family, who used to kidnap and pimp out women and little children. Ever since I found out what my father really did for a living, I get these attacks from time to time. Not when I’m in the middle of doing anything; when I’m alone, when I pause to take a breath.
Not now. Not now. I have to keep my mind clear for Darya. Maybe I can do something to save her.
I’m digging my nails into the flesh of my leg to satisfy the wordless voices that shriek at me from the void.
Bitch, bitch, bitch… Bleed, bleed, bleed…
I pull my hands away, splash my face with cold water, and I use every bit of strength in my mind and body to force the darkness back.
Someday I won’t be able to keep the screams away, and the darkness will claim me. Until that I day, I keep fighting to right past wrongs.
We spend the next few hours in silence.
I listlessly flip through a book without seeing the words on the page. Darya just lies on the bed, curled up on her side, staring at nothing.
Worry gnaws at my insides. Where are Simon and Yakov? What is happening to them right now? I hate this feeling of helplessness.
When the sun starts to dip under the horizon, we hear a rapping on our door.
It’s the butler-jailer, gesturing at us to follow him.
Darya and I exchange wordless glances of dismay. He’s come to take us somewhere, and it goes without saying that he could be marching us towards Very Bad Things, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
With no choice, we
follow him out of the room and down a long hallway. We’re both looking around for any clues as to our whereabouts. I see no other servants. We walk in absolute silence, our bare feet sinking into the carpet. There are classical landscape paintings showing hunting scenes on the wall, and sconces with electric lights.
I’m desperately trying to draw reassurance from the fact that we weren’t raped last night, that we’re dressed in clean clothing. Or is that a bad sign? Is someone trying to make us more presentable before they sell us?
I hate the world I move through these days, a world where I have to search through every kindness, looking for the trap hidden inside it.
Darya’s chewing on her lower lip and staring straight ahead with the look of a condemned prisoner marching towards her execution.
My panicked thoughts roll around like tumbleweeds. Are Simon and Yakov here? Are they dead? Is today the day I die?
We’re ushered into a brightly lit living room. It’s decorated in the Russian style, with red Oriental carpets hanging on one of the walls. There are more bookcases at the end of the room, stocked with leather-bound hardcovers in color-coordinated groupings of red, black and brown. Overhead, a crystal chandelier scatters cold white diamonds of light across the hardwood floor. There is a grouping of black leather sofas and chairs set around a coffee table made from a sawed-off tree trunk with a polished top. Sergei, Ludmilla, and Chief Ivanov are sitting there drinking vodka from cut crystal glasses, eating cheese, crackers and caviar from a silver tray, and chatting. How civilized.
My heart twists in my chest, but my face is a blank mask of indifference.
Darya and I walk over and stand there. There are empty chairs, but sitting down with this pack of hyenas would just feel wrong.
Sergei refills his glass, his cold gray gaze fixed on me. He doesn’t say a word. And I’m not going to beg him for attention like a love-starved puppy.
So I turn my fury on the chief.
“Why in the hell would you work with someone like Sergei?” I shout at him. “I suppose you’re the roof for his organization?”
“Roof” is a uniquely Russian concept. It means protection. It’s a billion-dollar industry here. If you have a business, you need to “buy a roof” from whichever local criminal enterprise is in charge. The bigger your business, the more you need a roof, and the more you pay for that roof.
Chief Ivanov smiles grimly. “No, he’s mine.”
He sits there and lets that sink in for a moment.
Sergei’s the roof.
Sergei’s got so much money and influence here that he’s providing protection for a police department in a district with hundreds of thousands of people.
In the meantime, Sergei pretends to have little interest in the conversation, draining half his glass in one long gulp.
I spin to face him. “Impressive,” I say to him, with venom dripping from my words. “You’re doing so well for yourself. So when’s the auction, asshole? How much do you think you’ll get for me?”
“He’s not a trafficker,” Ludmilla tells me wearily. She rubs at her face with one hand.
“That’s funny. He sure acts like a trafficker,” Darya snaps. “What with the kidnapping and drugging us and all that.”
“If I were a trafficker, I’d have removed your hair extensions and all the weapons that you have hidden in them,” Sergei says to me, ignoring her.
My hand twitches with the urge to pat my hair. Damn him. The son of a bitch is always so many steps ahead of me, it’s like he circumnavigated the globe and came back up behind me.
“Did you let us escape from that truck on purpose?” I ask him.
“Yes.”
The casual admission sends a wave of fury burning through my blood. We were running in terror, freezing, and it was all a game to him.
Sergei, the giant Bengal tiger toying with its prey. I can see a glint of amusement in his eyes.
“You did it so we’d realize that we don’t have a friend in the world out here,” I glare at him accusingly. “That there’s nowhere we can run from you, because everyone is in your pocket.”
He inclines his head, his lips curling in a humorless smile. “Something like that.”
“So let’s pretend you’re telling the truth for once in your wretched, pointless life, and you’re not a trafficker.” I spit the words at him, desperate to hurt him, but he’s made of something other than human flesh, and he doesn’t even blink. “Then why the hell are we here? Why are they here?” I gesture at the chief and Ludmilla.
Chief Ivanov sets his glass down and leans forward. “Did you girls learn nothing from last night?” His voice is thick with anger. “If we were really traffickers, that would have just been the beginning. Sergei wanted my help getting it through your thick skulls that what you’re doing isn’t just dangerous, it’s deadly. The traffickers in the region are on to your little amateur operation, and there’s a price on all of your heads.”
I already knew that. What’s his point?
Darya chokes out an unbelieving laugh. “Excuse me. That was you trying to help us, last night? Including putting a date rape drug in my drink at the bar?”
“That part was real,” Sergei interjects, his tone grim. “He wasn’t working for me. You were drugged by a scout for Cataha. And we cut the scout’s throat.”
Darya visibly shudders at that, and hugs herself, sinking back in her seat.
She glances at me. “Natasha saved me,” she says defensively. “There was no reason to terrorize her and her friends like that.”
Sergei snorts. “Natasha is a little girl playing grownup games that are going to end in the deaths of her and all of her friends. So it stops now.”
“Do you want to know why the local police department needs a roof?” Ivanov asks.
“Not particularly.” My tone is sullen, and I flick a glance at him and look away.
Ivanov stands up and pulls out a manila envelope from inside his jacket. His hand is actually shaking as he opens it and slides out a picture of a nude young woman staring up at the sky. My heart leaps to my throat. She’s been slashed from collarbone to navel, her intestines spilling out.
His face is dark with anger. He shoves it in my face, and then Darya’s. She tries to look away, but he puts in right in front of her face, inches away. “Look at that!” he barks. “That was my cousin’s daughter. She’s dead because of my job. Because I’m working with Sergei to take down Cataha. Lara was seventeen years old. She snuck out to a nightclub one night, against her parent’s orders. That’s where they got to her. She was left in the middle of the street in a shopping district, for us to find. After that, I sent my wife and children and my cousin’s remaining family, along with my parents, out of the country until Cataha is dead and his organization dismantled.”
Now I feel horrible. I was assuming the worst of him, and he’s actually risking his life out there and suffering horrific tragedy because of it.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I look up at him. “But that’s what my friends and I are fighting against. How can I sit there in comfort, in safety, knowing that’s happening?”
“Because it’s not your fucking job to take on Cataha, and frankly, you’re not very good at it,” Sergei snarls at me.
The insult stings, like all his insults do, but I ignore it. “What about my friends?” I ask. “Why aren’t they here? What did you do to them?”
Sergei pulls his phone out of his pocket and makes a call. When it’s answered, he hands me the phone.
“Simon? Yakov?” I cry out, hope swelling in my heart.
“You’re all right?” Simon all but sobs, and I feel as if a thousand-ton weight has lifted off my shoulders.
“I’m fine. Where are you? Can you tell me?”
“I’m back at my apartment. Yakov is with me. Wow, life is interesting.” That’s a pre-arranged phrase. He’s not being coerced.
I relax visibly.
“Brilliant code, there,” Sergei observes drily, and I curse myse
lf for being so easy to read.
“The police chief had a talk with us before he dropped us off,” Simon says, sounding glum. “I’m sorry, Natasha, we won’t be able to do this anymore. We have to shut the whole operation down.”
My head is swirling in a sea of confusion. What bizarre kind of angle is Sergei playing here? Why did he choose this method to shut us down?
He could easily have killed us all, if he were a trafficker who wanted to stop us from interfering with him. Nobody would ever have known.
Is the chief telling the truth? Is Sergei?
The chief stands up and looks from me to Darya. “I have to get back to work. If I see either one of you in that nightclub, or any nightclub, I will take you into custody and your ass will sit in a jail cell for the next year. You amateurs have had a few small successes, but your luck will run out sooner rather than later, and these men will rape you with knives until you beg for death, then strangle you with your own intestines.” Darya looks horrified. “So if Sergei, Ludmilla and I scared the hell out of you last night and made you think you were going to die, then good. That was just a tiny taste of what to expect if you get caught. Oh, and that video we made you watch, of the woman being hanged? It was legit. We seized that from one of Cataha’s men. The woman was a twenty-year-old secretary who worked for the police department. We’ve never found her body.”
I stare at him, and I feel like I’m looking at a truthful man. The lines of anguish cutting into his face, the rage in his eyes – I don’t think the best actor in the world could fake that. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your cousin, I’m sorry about your secretary. I hope that when you take Cataha down, he dies a slow, lingering death.”
The chief gestures at Darya. “You’re free to leave. I can even give you a ride home if you like.”
Darya flicks him a glance of disgust, as if he’s a bug that’s crawled out from under a rock. “What about her?” She inclines her head at me.
“I need to talk to her,” Sergei says.
The butler walks across the room, holding out a coat, which he offers to Darya. It’s not the cheap, shabby coat she was wearing last night. It’s a beautiful, luxurious brown mink. In his other hand, he’s holding out a purse. A Fendi. I’d wager it’s genuine.
Thirty Days of Hate Page 3
