Sins of the Master

by Catherine Taylor

  Dylan grinned. “I was sure you would. My apologies, Lena, but we have to leave here within the next few minutes. Have you got everything you need?”

  “I think so, but where are we going? Maybe I should change my clothes.”

  “You look stunning,” he smiled. “And I’ll explain everything in the car. Can we get going, please?”

  “Of course. You just got me all flustered with this sudden rush. You don’t tell me anything, so how can I know what I’m supposed to be doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Lena. But it has become somewhat of an emergency.”

  “Then let’s go.” She marched ahead towards the door, grumbling. “It helps if one knows what they’re doing.”

  Dylan glared at Vanessa. “Don’t say a fucking word.”

  “Oh, I like her,” Vanessa laughed. “She’s perfect for you… Master.”

  “I suppose she told you about us?”

  “I think it was reasonably summed up in ‘the man I love,’ and by the way you’re placating her, I suspect she’s not one of your slaves.”

  “It’d be a cold day in hell before she would bow to me.”

  “So what are we going to do with Lena?”

  “This is where I need you to hear me out. That woman out there is everything to me and I want her safe.”

  Vanessa shook her head. “I know what you’re going to say and you can forget it. We’ll take her to the hospital and she can stay with James and Mairead, but I’ll be with you, and that’s my final word. Get used to it, Dylan. From what I’ve seen of Lena, there’s every chance you may need to get used to submitting to a woman.”

  He grinned. “About as much chance as you fucking a man, Vanessa.”

  * * * * *

  Bevan Miller gazed through the tinted windows of the SUV and watched a gang of youths walk past on the opposite footpath. Most of them were smoking and some were carrying bottles of alcohol. They were loud and pushing each other about, until one stopped at a high, green wooden fence. Pulling out a spray can, he wrote several expletives, before they all laughed and ran off.

  “Lowlifes,” he murmured, before looking at his watch. He pushed a button on the phone mounted at the dash. “Mr. Utkin, have you reached a decision?”

  “I’ve got one better,” Eddie’s voice came back through the speakers. “You want the location of Zaleski’s house. I have it for you.”

  “How?”

  “Let’s just say I can be very persuasive with women. Esther wants to take us there personally.”

  “No need. Just get the location and I’ll have a helicopter there to see if she’s lying.”

  Eddie chuckled. “No, Mr. Government Man, you want your house. I want my life and right now, the girl is my insurance policy. I put a bullet in her and you have nothing, so if you want your house, you’re going to do things my way.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “You’re going to have to come on a road trip with us.”

  Miller laughed softly. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t see the merit of that plan. What’s to stop you taking me hostage until you get what you want and then put a bullet in me? For all I know, the girl has told you nothing.”

  “I’m certain you’ll have backup. Esther has told me about all this technology that has bypassed me for the last twelve years, hacking into phones and such. She also tells me you could have a passport made for me within hours, not days. Very smart girl this one. She’s even going to set me up an offshore account for you to pay me.”

  “Mr. Utkin, how is it that you were able to extract so much information when your niece wasn’t getting anywhere?”

  “Simple,” Eddie replied. “An old prison buddy of mine is keeping Esther’s mother entertained at his house. While Esther is quite the tough nut to crack, her mother is a little more fragile.”

  Miller scowled and took a breath. “Before I commit myself to anything, I want you to ask Esther a question. Ask her what the difference is between a prism and a zirconia.”

  “What?”

  “Ask her. If she’s worth anything to me, she will know the answer I want.”

  A moment later a quiet, feminine voice came back at him. “Prism is the poor man’s version of a far superior program used in the eighties by the military, to collect data from satellites and disable them as part of anti-satellite warfare between the US and the Soviet Union. That program, Zirconia, was hacked and destroyed by a virus in the nineties, along with all the files of its history and development.”

  “But not before Zirconia was replicated,” Miller added. “By a traitor named Damyen Kravek, who was responsible for the original’s demise. Did he happen to mention that?”

  “No,” Esther replied. “I don’t know that name.”

  “It’s one of many your friend has used. I believe it might be his actual name. Maybe if there had been enough of him left to bury, we could have put it on his tombstone.”

  A moment later, it was Eddie that spoke. “What did you say to her?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I want her, and I will pay for her. By the end of the day, you’ll have your passport, flights to wherever you want, and a million US dollars deposited in your new account. You are not to harm her in any way. I will be there within the hour.”

  Miller hung up and turned his head to the large man in the driver’s seat. He spoke to him in Russian. “And there we have it. Tell your men to hold back and keep a vigilant eye on the flat until I’m there. They are not to go in under any circumstance or to attempt any seizure or interception. We’re going to do this right. And, Olek, I want someone to verify the whereabouts of Esther’s mother, and find out her current situation, without employing any intervention.”

  “So you’re going to go with them?” Olek frowned.”

  “I am, and I’ll be expecting you to keep a close eye on my welfare.”

  Olek nodded. “We’ll be following and have you on GPS. Once we have confirmation of the location, we will be able to be move in and lock it down. I’ll have my snipers on standby. Nobody will be arriving or leaving until we have heard from you.”

  “Just be aware, that I will not be armed, and Ivanchenko won’t hesitate to kill me. If we have to give him what he wants, then so be it, and I imagine he will take the girl again as insurance, and possibly myself. That’s where your snipers had better know what they’re fucking doing.”

  “Sven could shoot the dick of a gnat at a thousand metres on a bad day, but I have a better suggestion. We’ll plant a gun in the car for you, before you go anywhere.”

  “No way.” Miller shook his head. “The last thing I need is the police coming down on us because someone’s reported a gunshot. It will be useless if Ivanchenko is driving, and if the girl is driving, it will panic her.”

  “You’re out of touch with weaponry, Mishka. We’ll plant a Ruger with a silencer and subsonic ammunition. You’ll hear little more than the click of the trigger, almost as if the gun had misfired, but then you will see the instant results. If you’re careful, Ivanchenko won’t know what struck him.”

  “I don’t know. Plant it and I will assess the situation. No doubt, I will be bound. It’s not an ideal situation, but I’ll work with it.”

  “Has it occurred to you, Mishka, if you had allowed Semyon to bring us in on this operation in the first place as he wanted, it would have been completed successfully by now and he might still be alive.”

  “I had enough trouble convincing Kutcher to liaise with the Russian government, especially with what’s happening in Crimea. Now Adele Easton has shot her mouth off and verified a Russian presence. The sooner we wrap this up, the sooner I can get out of here and home again.”

  “And how will that feel, Mishka?”

  “Incredible.” Miller’s face grew sombre. “You talk about what we should or shouldn’t have done. No-one understands that more than I do. What should have been five years in this country has now been fifteen, after that first fuck-up in Paris. I should have learned then not to send in a
mateurs.”

  “Instead, you’ve been a valuable asset to your country. Don’t forget that, Mishka.” Olek patted his shoulder and laughed. “And it is still a great source of amusement to those of us aware of the situation. A Russian agent, directing New Zealand’s Intelligence.”

  Miller grinned. “And with our recent co-operation with the US, it could have been much more amusing, but alas, everything comes to an end.”

  “You’ll be looking at the Order of Lenin, at least.”

  “At least,” Miller nodded thoughtfully. “And as an added reward, I might take that little blonde slut home with me. I’ll be happy to take over as her new Master.”

  “Master,” Olek scoffed. “Zaleski certainly lived the good life, didn’t he? I need to look into that kinky shit and get me some of it.”

  “Well, you’re about to enter his world, and once we have what we want, we’ll let Esther Manning give us a hands on tutorial.”

  * * * * *

  Eddie frowned at Esther clutching a pillow and weeping into it. “Don’t think about it. Your Master went out the way he wanted to. He chose his own death.”

  She nodded sorrowfully. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “I don’t think we have much choice. At least this delays both our deaths for a few more hours. Of course you didn’t really have to consider me.”

  “You saved my life.” She managed to smile at him. “And I don’t want to be with him on my own.”

  Eddie leaned in towards her. “Tell me why you changed your mind about the house.”

  “What choice do I have? They’ll get it out of me eventually. I don’t want to suffer any more and you won’t kill me. At least this way I will be where I’ve been happy for the last four years and if I die there…”

  “Let’s not talk about dying. Who knows? We may yet escape.”

  Esther smiled. “Whatever happens, thank you for telling me about Master. You don’t know how much that meant to me.”

  Eddie frowned and hung his head. “You wanted to know why I care. I did something once that I will never forgive myself for. It caused my wife to take her life and only then did I realise what I had lost. At her funeral, I had this duty to be staunch, with all my hypocrite family, but I couldn’t do it. I walked away before they had put her in the ground. Igor was yelling at me to come back. Instead, I went and sat down far away behind a tree and cried liked a fucking baby.

  “Jahn came to me. I told him to ‘fuck off’ but he didn’t. Instead, he pulled out a packet of cigarettes, lit one and handed it to me and put a bottle of vodka in my hand. He told me that nobody would bother me and then walked away. I stayed behind that tree for the rest of the day, drinking, smoking and bawling. Drunk as I was, somehow, I still ended up in my bed that night. He knew that I had learned a very harsh lesson and that was his way of telling me that there was no longer any enmity between us. That’s why I didn’t die with my brothers. He stopped me from being there that day and made me leave the country.”

  “Why did he kill them?”

  Eddie frowned. “Tatiana, my wife, was fond of Jahn and I think he was in love with her, not that he ever gave me cause for concern. Tatiana was a very gentle woman, kind, loving and caring. When she took her life, it made both of our worlds so much darker, but his was one of rage and fury. I saw the same look in his eyes as I saw that day in prison.”

  “But he killed your family.”

  “And I didn’t shed a tear. I was never really one of them,” Eddie smiled. “I hated the things they did. My father would beat my mother and then beat me when I tried to help her. My brothers made my childhood hell and forced me to do things that gave me nightmares. I did what I did to survive, but basically, I have always been a coward.”

  “No,” Esther insisted. “You could have left me with Asya and let her hurt me. You could have walked away, even after you killed her, but you didn’t, and now your own life is in danger.”

  “We have a phone. Perhaps we should ring the police.”

  “No. The phone will be blue-jacked and they’ll be aware of every text or call, and able to listen in. I just hope Mum has kept to her routine and gone to her sister’s house for the day. That could backfire on me terribly.”

  “I’m sure she has.” Eddie studied her with a grin. “That was clever thinking on your part. That stuff you spoke to him about, anti-satellites, prisms and the like… how do you know all this?”

  “I was showing off,” Esther grinned. “It was only recently that Master told me all this, in preparation for further training. I just repeated it word for word, just to sound impressive, but I don’t know much about it.”

  “But now he thinks you have this knowledge…”

  “And that means he’ll still need me, even after he knows the location. My life was only secure up until then, but now he’ll want me to show him how it works and that will give us more time.”

  “And do you drive, Esther?”

  “I can drive.”

  “Good. I’ll keep an eye on our passenger while you take us there. Maybe on our journey we can come up with something, but you can be sure he’ll have a tail on us.”

  “And we’ll be on the highway,” Esther added. “I don’t think I can outrun them. I wish Mairead were here. She’d certainly give it a go.”

  “Just drive normally. We’ll keep our wits about us and look for the first opportunity to escape, but Esther, it is important that we don’t reveal this mutual respect between us. They must believe you are my hostage.”

  “I know, but it’s not just mutual respect,” Esther smiled. “You’re my friend.”

  Eddie nodded and grinned. “I like that. I haven’t had a friend in a very long time.”

  The phone rang and Eddie answered and listened. He smirked at Esther when he hung up. “He’s on his way. Are you ready for this?”

  “No, but let’s do it anyway.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

  Vanessa drove while Dylan sat with the laptop opened, watching the tracking dot leave Wellington and make a steady northward progression towards them. He cursed quietly, and Vanessa glanced at him.

  “Problem?”

  “They’re headed this way. In another half hour they’re going to pass right by us and we’ll still be an hour out from the city.”

  “Then we’ll have to stop somewhere and wait. It might be possible to get a visual and find out what vehicle they’re in.”

  “Featherston,” Dylan said, staring at the map. “It’s coming on peak hour traffic and we’ll be cutting it close, but that’s about our best choice. We’ll be able to park at the shopping centre and have a clear scope of the road.”

  “And then what?”

  “And then I dump you and Lena out and follow them.”

  Vanessa glared at him and whispered, “You’re not getting rid of me.”

  Lena leaned forward from the back seat. “What is this, Jahn? Where are we stopping?”

  “In this next town,” he replied, eyeing Vanessa. “You and Vanessa can stretch your legs and use the facilities if necessary.”

  “I’m fine,” Vanessa said.

  “But Lena might need help finding her way. I wouldn’t want her to get lost and be on her own.”

  “I’m sure Lena is capable.”

  “I’d rather you were with her.”

  “Stop it,” Lena snapped. “I know how this works. We’ve done this before, Jahn, where you leave me to put your life in danger and I sit and wait, hoping you’ll be alright. Well, I’ll be quite fine on my own.”

  Dylan shifted around to look at her. “Lena, these people have a friend of mine and they will hurt her if I don’t go after her.”

  “And her name is Esther, and she calls you Master. I know. Greta told me all of it and how Esther saved her life, and how she loves you.”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

  “How do you know what I’m thinking? I know you have to save this girl and I want you to, but don’t treat me lik
e an imbecile. You and Vanessa do what you have to do and just leave me at this place and I will be fine.”

  “I will send someone to get you as soon as possible.”

  “Whatever.”

  The traffic began to build up when they were still on the outskirts of the town, and only got heavier as they entered. The car crawled along and Dylan could see the tracking icon moving much more slowly as well.

  “At least fifteen minutes before we cross.” Dylan looked out at the traffic and shook his head. “We won’t be able to pinpoint anything in this.”

  “There’s the shopping centre,” Vanessa said.

  Some of the traffic was entering the carpark ahead of them and the drive became a crawl as cars pulled out of parks and others took their places.

  “Seven minutes, Vanessa.”

  “I’m doing my best,” she replied, cruising the last lane of parked cars, facing the road.

  A car began to pull out and Vanessa swooped into the space the moment it was out.

  “Well done.” Dylan breathed out and snatched up a set of binoculars. “Any moment now.”

  The traffic was moving slowly, giving them a clear view of the drivers.

  “Maybe I will stretch my legs.”

  Dylan was too busy to hear, until Lena was suddenly out of the car and strolling towards the footpath.

  “What the fuck?” He went to open his door, but decided against getting out. He shot Vanessa a pleading angry glance. “I can’t let them see me.”

  “I’ll get her.” Vanessa pulled the keys out of the ignition. “Just in case you had any ideas of leaving without us.”

  Lena wandered down the road a bit as Vanessa came after her.

  “Lena, you have to get back in the car now.”

  Lena didn’t look at her. Her frown was fixed on a white SUV cruising past slowly with a bearded man sitting in the back. At the last minute, he stared back at her.

  “Eddie?”

  Vanessa looked at her and then at the car. “Lena, did you know that man?”