He sincerely hoped that he and Colonel Aubyn Calthorpe would meet again.
First, he had to find Valentina. Where they’d been keeping her wasn’t far away. He slipped out of the room, snicked the door quietly shut behind him, and began making his stealthy way through the corridors. He met nobody, heard nothing. The building seemed deserted.
He came to another door. Paused, listening, pistol ready. He could hear nothing. He reached down and slowly, slowly, turned the handle. The door eased open a crack. He swung it open the rest of the way and stepped in.
A rush of stale air greeted him. The room was empty. Shadowy. Silent. Cold. Nobody had been here for a long time.
Ben moved on. He came to another door, and tried that one too. Same result.
And now he could feel the tension rising inside as doubts began to grip him. What if Valentina was no longer here? What if they’d taken her away? Then he would never find her.
It was when he came to the third door that he knew immediately that he was in the right place. It wasn’t anything he could hear. Like before, there was nothing in the air but flat silence. But it was another sense that was telling him what lay behind the door.
He could smell something.
He gripped the pistol in his right hand. Reached for the door handle with his left. Counted three – two – one.
And went in.
Chapter 48
Its present users called the building ‘the old hospital’, which indeed it was, or had been in its time. More correctly, the abandoned and semi-derelict facility in the North-Eastern Administrative Okrug, a few minutes’ drive off Prospekt Mira, had served for the latter part of the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth as a particularly harsh and repressive psychiatric clinic for mentally retarded children. The place had finally been closed down in 1976 when the full scale of its outdated and barbaric practices had come to light, and never repurposed. For more than forty years it had stood empty and unseen from the street in a weed-strewn wasteground behind tall rusty gates, slowly rotting, parts of its roof falling in, a silent and sombre monument to the many innocents who had lived and suffered there.
But some old traditions never die.
Antonin Bezukhov had been using the abandoned psychiatric clinic for years. It was conveniently situated not too far across the city from his headquarters, but most importantly it was secluded enough to keep what went on there strictly unseen and unheard. Many of the interrogation subjects his men had brought here for torture had never left the place. The clinic’s two acres of overgrown grounds had a lot of graves in them.
Up three flights of stairs and along a dingy hallway where damp plaster littered the floor and toadstools sprouted from the mildew-blackened walls, there was a door; and behind that door was a room with boarded-up windows that had once been a dormitory for some of the facility’s most profoundly disturbed inmates. Not all of the children had been so disturbed when they’d arrived, but the horrors of their new existence had quickly bent their minds. The rows of iron-frame beds were long gone now, though the anchor points where many of the kids had been chained to the walls remained, along with a few more added since. They were an occasionally useful feature for the purpose to which the room was put nowadays.
Chief Bezukhov was sitting on a wooden stool, smoking a cigar. To his left and right stood two of his main men, Vankin and Smyrnoi, who’d worked with him for years. Also in the room were a handful of the chief’s other agents, there to assist with the torture under the expert supervision of Vankin and Smyrnoi. The pair had fine-tuned their skills back in the early 2000s while employed at the secret federal concentration camps set up to incarcerate and ‘process’ captured rebels during the Chechen insurgency. They’d perfected a variety of tortures, like the so-called ‘wolf canines’ method which involved prisoners having their teeth sawn to bloody stumps while forced to bite down on a wooden rod; the ‘Chechen table’ around which the victims were made to sit with their tongues nailed down to the tabletop; and other techniques still less savoury, some of them designed to extract information but mostly, in truth, just for the fun of watching someone being degraded and mutilated until they begged for death.
The situation had not yet reached that point for Yuri Petrov, but there was no telling how far things might progress before they were done that night. Yuri was manacled by his wrists and ankles to a metal chair. Several wires were attached to the tubular frame of the chair using car battery connectors, and ran across the floor to a voltage control box that could rack the current up high enough to cause extreme agony. To ensure maximum electrical conductivity, an assistant wearing thick rubber gloves and boots stood by with a bucket of water, which he sloshed over Yuri every few minutes.
‘Hit him again,’ Bezukhov said calmly between puffs of his cigar. Vankin’s small, piggy eyes glowed as he twiddled the red rotary dial on the control box a little higher. Yuri let out a sustained shriek and squirmed desperately in the chair, trying to peel as much of his drenched skin and clothing away from the electrified metal as possible. To no avail. After five full seconds of tormented twitching and convulsing, Bezukhov nodded to Vankin, who turned the dial back down again. Yuri sank into his chair, gasping, his eyes bloodshot, his face ghastly.
‘It’s not pleasant, is it, Yuri? Is this really what you want? Of course not. Then answer the question.’
Yuri gritted his teeth and he stared at Bezukhov in hatred. ‘I already told you a hundred times, I don’t have it any more,’ he croaked.
‘Then tell us where you hid it,’ Bezukhov said wearily. ‘Or else …’ He signalled to Vankin. ‘Again.’
Vankin happily obliged. He cranked the knob even higher. Yuri’s scream filled the room.
‘You can make it stop, Yuri,’ Bezukhov said when the agony subsided. ‘All you have to do is utter those few simple words.’
‘In the woods!’ Yuri bellowed.
‘What woods?’
‘Near Grisha’s place. I could take you there!’
‘Think I’m stupid, Yuri? That I can’t see you’re just playing for time? What good do you think that’ll do you, eh?’ Bezukhov waved his cigar in the direction of a large packing case that stood by the far wall. ‘See that crate over there? That’s Vankin and Smyrnoi’s little box of tricks. They’ve got all kinds of toys inside. It’s just a question of time before one of them loosens your tongue. If we have to cut off your fingers and toes, you know we will. Other things, too. But it really doesn’t have to go that far. Come on, Yuri. Make it easy on yourself. None of us is going anywhere until you give me what I want.’
Which, at least as far as Chief Bezukhov was concerned, wasn’t strictly true. Evening was fast falling. He had tickets to the new production of Prokofiev’s Obrucheniye v monast ī re at the Teatr Bolshoi that night and he was already in danger of running late if he didn’t get out of here in the next forty minutes, tops. Mrs Bezukhova was actually the opera fan of the family, more than her husband. She’d have his guts for garters if he made her miss the show.
Bezukhov exchanged glances with Vankin and Smyrnoi, who both shrugged. They’d been at this for ages; he should have cracked by now. They could press him much harder, but physical mutilation was a risky option. With Grisha Solokov dead, the last thing Bezukhov wanted was for Petrov to bleed out or die of a goddamn heart attack before revealing where he’d hidden Object 428 and its plans. There had to be another way to get him to talk.
‘Let my child go,’ Yuri croaked. ‘Send her home. And I’ll tell you where it is. Then you can kill me if you want. I don’t care.’
Bezukhov crushed out the stub of his cigar and took out his phone. Yuri had just given him an idea.
‘Who’re you calling, chief?’ Vankin said, a trifle disappointed that he might not get to start lopping off body parts after all.
‘I’m calling Arkangelskaya. Let’s get them to bring the kid over here. Something tells me that when we start opening her up in front of her loving daddy here, he’ll change his
tune. Won’t you, Yuri? We’ll soon have you singing like a sparrow.’
Yuri’s cry of furious protest was lost in his scream as Vankin cranked the current once more.
The chief stood up and walked out of the room, so that he could talk without being drowned by the victim’s noise. On the dark, dingy landing outside he dialled a number and waited impatiently. The phone rang several times before he got a reply. There was a silence on the line. ‘It’s Bezukhov,’ he rumbled. ‘Is that you, Arkangelskaya?’
Another silence. Then a woman’s voice, deep and croaky from too many rough cigarettes, replied, ‘Yes, this is Arkangelskaya.’
‘We need the brat over here,’ he said. ‘I’m sending some guys to pick her up.’
Chapter 49
Ben stood motionless outside the door. The scent he could smell coming from behind it was the same stink of bad tobacco that he’d noticed hanging around Arkangelskaya earlier, as though she’d been smoking dried horse dung when she wasn’t playing doctors and nurses.
This was the holding room. It might now be empty, or it might not. There might be a dozen armed men waiting just inside the door, ready to shoot him to pieces. Or both Arkangelskaya and her hostage might be long gone. Only one way to find out.
Ben held his breath. As slowly as he could, fighting his impatience to just fling the door wide open, he turned the handle. Pushing ever so gently, he saw a thin strip of light appear around the edges of the door. Someone was in there, for sure. The acrid tobacco scent from within was suddenly stronger in his nostrils.
Ben pushed the door open wide enough to peer through the gap. The first thing he saw was the white-coated beanpole figure of Arkangelskaya. She was standing with her back to the door, gazing out of a window at the falling dusk outside. One arm folded across her waist, the other poised with a cigarette dangling from between her long, bony fingers. A thin stream of smoke curled upwards and dissipated where it met a draught from the cracked window pane. There was a silent walkie-talkie handset protruding from one pocket of her lab coat. She seemed far away in thought and hadn’t heard the door open behind her.
Arkangelskaya wasn’t alone in the room. A few feet from the window, Valentina was sitting bound and gagged in a chair while the doctor lady puffed away in her brown study. The child looked completely exhausted and drained of emotion, slumped against the thin cord bonds that held her little body tightly in the chair.
Ben slipped silently into the room. Arkangelskaya still didn’t turn around. Her radio made a little chirp, which she ignored. He took a step towards her. Valentina’s puffy red eyes shot open wide as she saw him. He put a finger to his lips, signalling her to stay quiet. Took another step.
That was when Arkangelskaya sensed the new presence in the room and turned suddenly, her mouth opening to cry out in alarm. Before she could make a sound, Ben had closed the distance between them and clubbed her hard over the head with the butt of the pistol. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slumped unconscious to the floor.
Ben hurried over to Valentina and pulled away the gag that covered her mouth. She stared at him in amazement, blinking, then looked down at the rumpled shape on the floor. ‘ Elle est morte?’ she asked him in French.
‘Not dead,’ he replied as he got to work loosening the cord holding her to the chair. ‘Just sleeping.’
‘I wish she was dead. I hate her so much.’ She pulled a face. ‘My arms are all numb.’
‘Wiggle them like this, get the blood going again. Did she hurt you, Valentina? Did anyone harm you?’
Valentina shook her head.
‘All right, now listen. I need to know where those other guards are. One about my size, the other one not much bigger than you?’
‘They were here before. They come and go. I don’t know where they are now.’
Ben finished untying the child’s bonds, then hurried back over to search Arkangelskaya. The channel her walkie-talkie was tuned to was inactive, apart from the occasional chirp and crackle. He tossed it aside and went through the rest of her belongings. In the pockets of her white lab coat he found a mobile phone, which he kept for himself, and a small zippered pouch. The pouch contained a pair of syringes, each with its own little vial of liquid. The labels were in English, and both were printed with names he recognised. One was pentobarbital, a powerful sedative of the type used to knock out patients before surgery. The other was potassium chloride. A highly versatile drug, one of whose uses was as the finishing touch in executions by lethal injection, to stop the heart.
‘What’s that?’ Valentina asked, frowning at the pouch.
‘Nothing you need to worry about,’ he said. ‘Not any more.’
This woman with the name of an angel was really some kind of demon. Once they no longer needed Valentina, they were planning on putting her down like an unwanted kitten.
Ben wanted to beat the good doctor’s brains out. He wondered whether he’d find one of Calthorpe’s micro mind-control chips inside, if he did. Maybe; or maybe she was just naturally evil and didn’t need a little voice inside her head telling her what terrible things to do. He dragged her scrawny carcass over to the chair, propped her up and used the thin cord to truss her, none too gently.
When she was securely bound up and definitely not going anywhere, he glanced about him. A small door opened up into what turned out to be an empty storeroom to the side, little more than a cupboard.
‘Are we going now?’ Valentina asked.
‘In a minute.’
‘I hate this place. Horrible things happen here.’
‘I don’t like it much either,’ Ben replied. ‘But before you know it, you’ll be home safe and sound, and this will all be over.’
‘Are we going to fetch Papa and take him home too?’
‘First I need to know where they’ve taken him,’ Ben said. ‘That’s why I need to talk to the doctor here, in case she knows something. And that’s why I need you to go and stand in that cupboard for a minute, while I have a chat with her. Okay?’
‘I don’t want to go in there.’
‘Valentina,’ he said, looking at her.
‘I can help. Really.’
‘No, you can’t.’
‘But I can! I—’
Before she could say any more, Ben grabbed her and shoved her in the cupboard. ‘Put your hands on your ears and sing a song or something. Do not come out until I tell you, all right?’
‘Why?’
‘Because I say so.’ With a stern warning look, he closed her in. He sighed. Kids.
Arkangelskaya was coming round. Ben slapped her lightly on the cheek. Her eyes fluttered open, focused and hardened into pinpoints of fear. Up close, the skin of her face was coarse and heavily lined, creases and pores packed with makeup like masonry cracks repaired with filler. ‘Now it’s just you and me, Doctor,’ Ben said. ‘I know you understand English, so let’s not mess around. Tell me where Yuri Petrov is.’
‘I do not know where he is. I do not know this person.’ Arkangelskaya’s voice was low and harsh and croaky from too many years of puffing those foul things. It was enough to make a person think seriously about giving up smoking.
‘I was afraid you might say that,’ Ben told her. ‘I wouldn’t like to have to give you a taste of your own medicine, Doctor.’
He picked up the pouch. Took out a syringe and the vial marked POTASSIUM CHLORIDE. Removed the protective cap from the needle and poked it through the silver foil of the vial. As he worked the plunger, the syringe filled with the whitish liquid. Arkangelskaya’s eyes bulged as she watched him. She swallowed hard.
‘Still don’t know where your friends have taken him?’
She gasped and shook her head violently from side to side.
Ben stepped closer to her. ‘Doesn’t feel so great when you’re on the wrong end of the needle, does it, Doctor? I’m a nice guy who normally doesn’t do nasty things to people. But even nice guys can have a really, really bad day when they might suddenly forget themsel
ves.’
‘I do not know! I swear!’
‘You’re wasting time on that silly old cow,’ said a voice behind him.
He turned. ‘Valentina, I thought I told you to stay in the cupboard.’
‘It smells in there.’
‘Get back inside, please.’
‘What if she really doesn’t know?’ Valentina said, matter-of-factly, then pointed at Arkangelskaya and added, ‘Pump the horrible old witch full of poison and let’s get out of here.’
Ben stared at the kid and privately swore never again to disparage anyone who complained about how hard parenting was. ‘Are you trying to tell me my job now?’
She shrugged. ‘No, I’m trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen—’
‘What?’
‘That I know where Papa is.’
‘What?’
‘I heard the guards talking. They were speaking Russian, and they didn’t know I could understand.’
Ben’s mind flashed back to the memory of himself in the girl’s room back home in Le Mans, seeing her collection of Russian literature. Her mother telling him how she’d been secretly learning the language, wanting to become fluent in time to surprise her father for his fortieth birthday. As far as Calthorpe and his crew were concerned, she was just a little Dutch girl now living in France. Foxed by a twelve-year-old kid.
‘Tell me exactly what they said, Valentina.’
‘The old hospital. That’s where they’ve taken Papa.’
‘What old hospital?’
‘I don’t know, that’s what they called it,’ she replied all in a rush. ‘It must be somewhere in the city. They said they were taking him there to work on him. I’m not stupid, I know that means they’re doing awful things to him. It’s that horrid man called Bezukhov. I remember the name because of Count Pierre Bezukhov in War and Peace. I heard Papa telling Grisha about the things he does. Papa used to work for him, I think, but then he stopped because he didn’t like it any more and now they want to hurt him.’ Her face filled with strain. ‘I can’t stand thinking about it. We have to stop them.’
The Moscow Cipher (Ben Hope, Book 17) Page 28
