“Who am I to refuse such a request, Beatrice? Just don’t get cute.”
I made a big deal of keeping my eyes on the road and fumbling with the cup holders. I palmed the small knife, picked up the bottle by its cap, and dropped the three-and-a-half-inch weapon into my blouse while I made a big effort of unscrewing the cap. I took a couple of long swigs, as if I was thirsty, and then I returned the bottle to its compartment. Just outside Colchester, Yuri grunted.
“Take Roosevelt Highway.”
We drove in silence for several minutes before he directed me to go down Main Street. There wasn’t much action at this time of night. The sidewalks had been rolled up. Yuri seemed pretty confident that his game plan would work, that I wouldn’t bolt from the Subaru, but that was because of the little hostage he was holding in the back seat. He was busy texting. I could see the glow of his smartphone.
“Take the next left,” he said. He snapped a photo of the frightened child. A moment later, I felt my locket vibrate and I put my fingers around it, hoping to hide slight movement, as I slipped it into my tee shirt.
“The next right,” Yuri said, “onto Depot Road.”
I followed his instructions, not really sure where we were going or what our destination was. I only knew that he had a plan, and that meant he was going to carry it out. Dread rose up in my throat as we moved away from civilization, away from lights, cars, and other people. All I could hope was that we weren’t going back into the woods. Little Wardah was silently watching the man in the backseat with her, and she seemed to sense his evil intent. She was pressed up against the door, cowering. When we came to the train tracks, I knew what Yuri was going to do. The shaking started in my stomach as if a hoard of butterflies were set free, their fragile wings battering my insides with every flutter. Soon my legs and arms were shaking, too, as the message of panic began to spread through my terrified body. When the tires began to roll over the track, Yuri said the word I had been dreading.
“Stop here. Put your hands on the wheel, Beatrice.” I did as I was told, all the while trying to think. What would Ben do? That Vermonter train was going to show up at any moment, on its way to St. Albans. I remembered what Uncle Edward said. I had to do what was right, even if it meant dying to get the job done. My responsibility to this little war victim was what drove me to say what I said. As the Russian spy got out of the back seat, opened my car door, and fastened my trembling hands to the steering wheel with plastic straps.
“Please, Yuri...Grigoriy...I am begging you. Be a better man than your father was. Please don’t make this child watch. Please don’t destroy what is left of her childhood by making her witness my death.” My words came out as low and as soft as I could make them. I put as much sincerity and humility as I could into each one. He squatted down beside me, to check that the straps held fast, and as he did, I saw him studying me. I tried one more time. “Please.”
He gave me a slight smile, a tiny shake of his head, and shut the door. In the rearview mirror, I saw him stride away.
“I’m so sorry, baby. I am so very sorry, Wardah.” My eyes filled with tears, as sorrow sought to crush me long before the engine chugged down the track. I knew the Swiss Army knife was still down my blouse, nestled in my bra. I could feel it. Did I have time to use it? I was just about to hug the steering wheel in my effort to find out when the rear door opened.
“Ta’alay maa’ee!” Yuri commanded Wardah. He waved her on impatiently. She carefully slid off the seat and he roughly took her tiny hand, almost yanking her along with him. As soon as they were headed back towards Main Street, I reached for the knife. Working frantically, I tried to grasp it, aware of how little wiggle room I had. My fingers felt like boneless sausage links as I struggled to pull out the blade. Even as I sawed at the plastic, I could hear the sound of the train coming down the track. Twice, I sliced the skin of my wrists as the tip penetrated here and there. Wincing, I just ignored the pain and kept at it. I had just broken through the strap confining my left hand when my car door flew open and Ben appeared.
“You know, I would have had this in another minute,” I told him. “I just want to point that out for the record.”
“Well, babe,” Ben laughed, taking the Swiss Army knife out of my grasp and cutting the remaining strap, “I’ll be sure to inform the media. Now start the damn car and get it the hell off the tracks!”
We all looked at the headlight of the oncoming train, half a mile away. My fingers grabbed the ignition key and turned it.
“And for God’s sake, don’t flood the engine. Just take a breath and go slow.” Ben stepped back and I steered the Subaru forward, traveling another hundred feet or so, just to be sure I was far enough off the tracks. Then I tore off my seatbelt, flipped the door handle up, and pushed my way out of the car and into the waiting arms of my husband.
“How did you get here?”
“Mavis and I got a car in Burlington and drove up here. Where is Wardah?”
“I asked Yuri to take her, so she wouldn’t see me die.”
“You did what? Bea, what the hell were you thinking? You just gave the Russians a pawn!”
“I couldn’t let her die, Ben. And I didn’t want her to watch me die!”
“We have to find her! We have to get her back!” Ben shoved me at the car. “Hurry up and get in!”
Ben slid behind the wheel and started the car. My legs weren’t working. I held onto the car, trying to stay upright as I crawled along to the passenger side. As soon as I was in, he swung it around, trying to figure out if he had enough time to beat the train across the tracks. He didn’t. The gate had already closed, and even though he would have gladly busted through it, the train was just too close.
“Well, Merry Christmas to me! This is a royal cock-up!” Ben was steaming mad. “How could you think I wouldn’t get here in time? Didn’t you see that little locket light up?”
“I couldn’t take the chance, Ben,” I sighed. “I don’t think he meant to take her with him.
“Of course he did! The man is a monster!”
Car after car rumbled along the tracks before we saw the caboose. I saw the faces of the passengers in the windows as they traveled the final miles to St. Albans. The clicking and clacking of the train seemed to go on forever. My husband’s jaw was tight as he waited impatiently.
“Come on! Come on!” he growled, as if he could intimidate the train into moving faster to get out of his way. At last, the final car bumped over the track, the gate opened, and Ben hit the gas. We got as far as twenty feet when I screamed.
“Stop!”
Ben hit the brakes and when the car had slowed to a stop, threw the transmission into park. I was already out of that car, running down the road towards the little figure standing down the middle of the road.
“Wardah!”
“Bea!” It was the first time she had called me by name, and the sound of it was as sweet as honey. I wrapped my arms around the frightened child, holding her against my pounding chest.
“Is she okay?” Ben came up behind us, wanting to check her for injuries. “Did that bastard hurt her?”
We heard the sound of a motorcycle engine roar to life. Seconds later, a dark silhouette appeared in the road, emerging from the bushes. All three of us looked up in surprise as the driver raised a hand and sped off.
“Was that Yuri?” Ben was stunned. I nodded, suddenly heartened by the turn of events.
“He let her go.”
“Yes, he did.”
“Maybe he has some of his mother’s genes after all,” I suggested.
“Maybe.” Ben picked up Wardah and carried her back to the car in one arm. The other he wrapped around my shoulder, leaning over to kiss the top of my head. “He wanted you dead.”
“True,” I acknowledged. “It’s a good thing you put my knife back in the cup holder.”
“I didn’t,” my husband insisted. “I thought you lost it in the woods.”
“I did, but I thought you found it and p
ut it back.”
“Wasn’t me,” Ben insisted.
“Wasn’t me either,” I said. “You don’t think it was Yuri, do you?”
“Lord knows. It could be Yuri expected you to free yourself.”
“No. How is that possible? Those straps were on tight. You saw that.” I held Wardah on my lap as we headed back to the Bard’s.
“He counted on you to be a fighter, Bea. He gave you a chance to escape. You must have gotten under his skin. What did you say to him?”
“I merely asked him to be a better man than his father.”
“Hmm...” Ben was pensive, lost in replaying the event. “Unusual behavior for a spy. I still wouldn’t trust him, Bea.”
“No,” I agreed. “That wouldn’t be a good idea. You think he’ll be back?”
“Oh, yes. You can count on it.”
Chapter Eighteen --
“Who would like a piece?” I cut into the hummingbird cake, covered with coconut, and carefully extracted a luscious slice with pineapple filling oozing. Wardah’s eyes grew large and as I held it out to her, she nodded. Fatima said something to her in Arabic and the little girl’s dropped to her lap as she hung her head.
“Start with the adults, Bea,” Lorna advised. “Children are on the bottom of the pecking order back home and we do not want to cause confusion or sow the seeds of dissent.”
“Good idea,” Mavis agreed. We were all sitting in the dining room, having coffee and dessert. Wardah was sitting in Fatima’s lap, the two girls inseparable since their reunion. As the cake made its way around the table, I finally asked Fatima if she would like some.
“Yes, please. I love coconut.” Her hands reached out and accepted it, placing it on the table in front of her.
“Wardah, would you like some cake?” I held out a plate to her.
“Yes, please.” Ah, her first words of English. She was mimicking her older sister. That was good. It meant she was motivated to learn, very important for her future enrollment at the local elementary school. She slid off her sister’s lap and back into her own chair, picking up her fork before looking around the table. We were all digging in, but she hesitated, until she saw her big sister take a forkful.
“Delicious, Bea.” Uncle Edward was thoroughly enjoying his piece. I noticed Mavis finished the narrow slice she requested and was now looking at the remaining half on the cake plate. I slid it across to her and she helped herself to another.
“What can I say? It’s been a tough day. I burned off a lot of calories.” She placed another piece on her plate. “Not to mention it’s sinfully good.”
There was a little gasp. We all looked up at Fatima, who seemed horrified.
“Figure of speech,” Mavis told her. “Ay-yi-yi, how do I explain this to you?”
“The cake itself is not sinful,” Lorna explained. “You aren’t committing a sin by eating it. But it tastes so delicious, it feels as if it should be considered a sin, because you enjoy it so much.”
“Ah,” Fatima nodded. “May I please have another piece also?”
Wardah watched with fascination as she saw her big sister help herself. And then she looked to me.
“Fatima,” I said. “I think Wardah would like another small piece of cake. Would you please cut one for her?”
“Of course,” she smiled, hands on the cake knife. Wardah gave me a wide grin.
“Mmm!” the little girl smiled, one hand rubbing her tummy. Fatima leaned over and whispered something in her younger sister’s ear. Wardah nodded and tried on an English word for size. “Good.”
“Bravo,” Uncle Edward cheered, tapping his fork on his plate at the remaining crumbs, as we all joined in the applause for Wardah’s effort. “The cake is good.”
“Why don’t I settle the girls for the night?” Lorna offered. “I wanted to show Fatima the library, in case she would like to find a book to read.”
“Wonderful,” Uncle Edward agreed. “That will give us a chance to talk business. We have a few things to clear up.”
We all said our “good nights” to the girls and waited politely as they made their way out of the dining room. It struck me that Lorna and the Shakespearean scholar had made this arrangement before dinner, which mean that Uncle Edward really did want to discuss the matter of Yuri with us. We could see Lorna, the Jane Austen fanatic, pointing out a shelf in the room across the hallway.
“Let me guess,” I snickered. “Mansfield Park?”
“No, I vote it will be Emma,” said Ben, passing the carafe of coffee.
“Wrong,” Mavis corrected my husband. “It will be Sense and Sensibility.”
“Ten bucks says you’re all wet,” Uncle Edward insisted. “It will be Persuasion.”
“I heard that!” A smiling Lorna stood in the doorway, wagging her professorial finger at us. “And you’re all wrong. We’re starting with Pride and Prejudice. So there!”
Once we heard three sets of footsteps on the stairs, Uncle Edward leaned back in his chair. “Shall we get down to brass tacks? What happened on the train tracks was most unusual, for several reasons. Bea was strapped to the steering wheel, but she managed to get loose because her Swiss Army knife was in the cup holder. Yuri took Wardah out of the car at Bea’s request, so that Wardah would not be forced to see the train demolish Bea’s car. Ben managed to arrive in time to cut the last strap on Bea’s wrist....”
“Which I could have managed by myself,” I reminded them.
“Yes, Bea,” Ben groaned, adding an exaggerated roll of the eyes, “we are all aware of the fact that had I not arrived, you still would have succeeding in freeing yourself.”
“Thank you for admitting that.”
“You’re welcome. You’re a superstar. Now can we get back to reality for a minute, Mata Hari?”
“Fine,” I agreed sweetly, knowing it was chaffing Ben’s boxers to acknowledge that he was not my knight in shining armor. I left out the part about how, had the train been closer to the car, I probably would have lost my mind in a total panic. Why encourage his smug side?
“Fine,” he replied, automatically trying to have the last word.
“As long as we’re clear on that,” I threw back at him.
“Oh, trust me,” said Ben, crossing his arms and glaring at me. “We’re clear. Next time, I’ll just stand by while the train hits you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I retorted.
“No, you meant....”
“Children, children. Enough,” chastised Uncle Edward. He turned to Mavis. “Any thoughts?”
“The question is what changed Yuri’s behavior? It’s very unusual for a Russian officer with his training and status to allow a target to escape a planned death, let alone to help a child whose parent is of intelligence value to the Russians, without exploiting the situation.” Mavis was all business, looking for cracks in Yuri’s armor, no doubt hoping she could exploit one or two of them. Ben picked up his spoon and stirred his coffee before contributing his biggest concern.
“The most important question is how did Bea’s Swiss Army knife get back into her car after she left it in the woods.” Ben didn’t believe in coincidences.
“No, the most important question is did he kill Nizar because he was working with Philippe against the Syrians, which would mean Philippe was there for the DGSE or the Russians, or did Yuri kill him because Nizar was in the way of an Iranian effort to penetrate, with Russian assistance?” Uncle Edward folded his arms, watching us from his position at the head of the table, continuing the discussion. “We still have to consider the role Afarin played, since she was so instrumental in bringing down Marbury Books.”
“You think this is all connected with Marbury Books going bad?” I had a vested interest in the answer, because I was the one who got royally screwed on that one. It’s what brought me to the Bard’s Bed & Breakfast after the FBI insisted on taking over the bookstore.
“The end of Bea’s days at Marbury meant that Ben also came home to roost here, too.”
“Meaning Ben was forced to retire?” I asked. I looked at my husband. “You would have stayed at the CIA otherwise?”
“Sure, why not?” he admitted. “I got burned, my mission was cut short, and Uncle Edward needed help. I left the agency to protect other intelligence officers.”
“There was a security breach somewhere along the line,” Mavis told us. “The CIA wasn’t happy when Ben’s mission went belly up, so maybe it wasn’t a CIA screw-up.”
“Maybe that FBI counterintelligence effort at Marbury Books got messed up,” Ben suggested. “Especially if Yuri and his friends had a source in the Washington field office. The source could have been keeping the Iranians and the Russians apprised of the situation.”
“Other possibilities,” Uncle Edward demanded. “Think, people.”
“Maybe Yuri’s decided to get out of the game,” Mavis suggested, “and he’s just playing all sides in order to get paid before he disappears. Everyone will have egg on their faces.”
“Or maybe he’s dangling himself in front of the CIA, hoping someone will try to recruit him,” Ben countered. Always the skeptic.
“I still say Yuri made a decision at the last minute,” I told the group. “I don’t think he was planning to use Wardah as a pawn. If he had such a plan, he would have taken her initially. He left that little girl in the Subaru and walked away. He came back to get Wardah.”
“Let’s consider what we know about Yuri. He was surely listening to my conversation the other night with Bea,” Uncle Edward explained. “He heard everything we said, including the stuff about all the attempted rescues of him when he was a child. I suspect that your genuine empathy for his plight somehow helped him connect to you. I checked my safe this morning, by the way. The box is still there, but the contents were disturbed. I assume Yuri got his hands on it and copied it all.”
“He probably needed Philippe to gain access to the Bard’s Bed and Breakfast,” I suggested. “We would blame him for everything that went wrong because he was Johnny-on-the-Scene.”
“That would suggest that Yuri never intended to get caught in the act. If Bea hadn’t found that dead girl’s body, it would have been there for ‘Mr. Williams’,” Ben decided. “But because Bea did find it, we moved it, forcing them to steal it. What we don’t know is what would have happened if Bea hadn’t interfered.”
Let Slip the Dogs of War: A Bard's Bed & Breakfast Mystery #1 Page 13
