The Beauty of Bucharest

by S. J. Varengo

  “It’s a wicked good catchphrase.”

  He looked at her with an expression of mock annoyance, and then slipped the gun into the elastic waistband of his spandex pants. He reached up with his bare hand and gave the odd tile a little slap, almost as if he was high-fiving it. An instant later, there was a clicking sound, and where a moment before there was not so much as the barest hint of a crack or seam, a door opened out from the wall. It had moved about an inch, and he grasped the edge with his fingers and pulled it open.

  Behind the door was another hallway, but this one looked older and more like a section of a basement than the utility tunnel feel of the passages through which they’d passed to this point. He stepped aside to let her once again take the lead. Before she stepped through the door, Nicole looked up at her husband.

  “How did you know to stop here?”

  “Internal man-map, baby. You wouldn’t understand.”

  With a groan, she walked into the basement hallway. With a chuckle, Dan followed.

  Ileana looked at the small notebook that rested in the palm of her hand. The open page was filled with words, many of them crossed out and written over. It contained street names making up four different possible routes between the palace and the marina on the Dâmboviţa River where the yacht was moored. The page contained phone numbers of every member of the security detail, including the two new men, and even though she had them all programmed into her phone as well, it made her feel better to have a hard-copy backup. She’d also written out five separate time tables, one of each of the prospective travel routes, showing the exact moment they should reach each significant landmark, each turn along the course. It was a masterpiece of paranoid OCD. Looking at it for the twentieth time in the past hour, Ileana realized that it both made her feel a little better to have everything so well worked out, and no better at all knowing that no matter how thoroughly she planned, everything could still go to shit.

  She tapped the Bluetooth comms device in her ear and called each member of the detail in turn, making sure they were where they needed to be. Each, in turn, gave her a brief confirmation that they were either in or by the three black Escalades that would form the convoy, or outside Bogdan’s study (no doubt breathing the noxious fumes of his cigar through the closed egress), or stationed by the cell holding Ana Albu, as well as the twenty or so other women that Bogdan had either not found a buyer for or had not finished using for his own gratification.

  Everyone was in place. She glanced at her watch one more time, seeing that there was still thirty minutes of waiting to endure before it was time to commence the transfer. Waiting when everything was already prepared was the worst part of the job. She considered walking down the old dreary stairs to the basement, so that she could go to the pitch-black holding room, walk in, and give the Beauty of Bucharest… the Steel Queen, a hard slap across the face. Just to let her know that things were going to go the way Ileana said they would, not how the strong-willed model thought they might.

  But it wouldn’t do to deliver this unmarred Venus to her new master with a handprint on her cheek. Especially if he was from a culture where the unblemished lamb was held in high regard. It never even occurred to her that such thinking might be construed as racist. To her, it was all economics – giving the customer what he wants. Bogdan Grigorescu and his associates (and she included herself in that number), were an unsavory lot, but they were absolutely cherubic in comparison to his clientele. But like matters of race, matters of deviant sexual preference never really occurred to her either. Some men wanted women, some girls, and some boys. Not all the customers were men. The world was full of aberrant women as well. Ileana didn’t care. They were all nameless and faceless. The only differences between them were details that she helped see to.

  So, as much as it would have pleased her to hear and feel it, the crack of her hand on the model’s face was not going to happen.

  She looked at her watch again. Had it not been digital, she might have worried that it had stopped, but it was not the watch that was malfunctioning. It was the Universe. Only five minutes had passed since last she’d checked the time. La naiba, she thought. Then in English, Damn. Ileana Gabor was not an organism designed for waiting. She was made for action. She pulled out her phone and dialed Andrei’s number for the tenth time. As with every time before, she got his voicemail after his one-word greeting: “Vorbi!”

  “Talk? I’ll talk to you, Andrei! Listen carefully: you had better pray to whatever a pig like you prays to that you are already dead. Hopefully, when you died, you fell on the American bitch and broke her neck. Then at least you would have done something with your miserable, useless excuse for a life. But know this – if you are alive, it is for a very short time, because when I get my hands on you, you will begin a painful march towards death that you will beg me over and over to end for you. Am I clear, Andrei? Do yourself a favor. Be dead!”

  She mashed the disconnect button and realized that she felt a little bit better. Andrei probably was dead. As inept as he was, if he were alive, he would have made his way to her by now. But threatening him seemed to vent off some bile that was in danger of clouding her thoughts at the very moment they needed to be most clear.

  She looked at her watch. “La naiba!” she said aloud.

  13

  A Room with a View… Of Hell

  Nicole was sure almost as soon as the hidden door closed behind them that they’d entered the basement level of the Palace. Or perhaps it was a level lower than the basement. Houses of this sort, built at the end of the 19th or early in the 20th Century came with many features that modern buildings did not, and a sub-basement would not be out of the question.

  The old corridors, while hundreds of years more modern than even the latest passages of the catacombs, still held a trace of the musty odor that had characterized what ended up being a chambers of horror for her, and the scent-memory made her a little queasy. The good news was that modern lighting, in the form of single incandescent bulbs, protected by metal cages, lined the walls, allowing them to put their phones away, freeing up the second hand for whatever it might be called upon to do.

  Another benefit of being in the older corridors was that the floors were not as smooth and antiseptic as had been the maintenance tunnels, and with the uneven surface came a less acoustically perfect environment. There were no echoes and, if they stepped carefully, no loud footfalls. Aside from the bubbling in her stomach, Nicole was feeling encouraged. She glanced back at Dan, who smiled at her and gave her a silent thumbs-up. She returned the smile. As focused as she was on the mission, she could not help but be proud of him. A very few hours earlier, he had been in a literal state of shock, barely able to speak. Now he was following instructions to the letter, making observations that she hadn’t made, and in general lowering his level of liability. And, she had to admit, the combination of the form-fitting spandex and the .357 in his hand was a good look for him.

  At that second, she heard a noise ahead. The basement corridors were no less winding than had been the modern tunnels, but she had not felt disoriented in them, sensing she was moving, if not in the right direction, at least in some direction. Now it appeared that around a right-hand 90° turn some ten feet ahead, there was at least one other human being.

  In a stroke of good luck, the caged light bulb nearest them was burned out, and they were nicely hidden in shadow. She signaled for Dan to be even more cautious than before and tiptoed forward. From within the duffel, she extracted a small mirror on a telescoping handle, which she opened to its full, two-foot length. Reaching the corner, she signaled for Dan to stop, then carefully extended the mirror just far enough so that she could see around the corner. The new corridor was longer than any they’d yet encountered, and at a distance of perhaps two hundred feet, she saw a single sentry, apparently guarding the entrance to some sort of room.

  Without making a sound, she compacted the segmented mirror and slid it back into the gym bag, which she carefully set o
n the floor. She turned one final time to Dan, doing her best to indicate that she wanted him to stay calm, as well as silent, and then she extracted the carrying case of the AX388 and silently assembled it. Dan couldn’t help but be impressed by her expertise. Through most of the process, she didn’t even look at what she was doing, instead keeping her head cocked in a way that would allow her to hear if the man left his post and approached them. In a matter of seconds, Nicole held a fully constructed sniper rifle.

  “This is almost cheating,” she whispered to Dan. Creeping slowly, still hidden in the shadow serendipitously provided by the faulty light, she lay on her stomach at the end of the long hallway, and after a moment, squeezed the trigger.

  Dan clearly heard the groan even from around the corner, and he grimaced slightly. Now it was his turn to flash back to the catacombs. But to his credit, he swallowed hard and waited for the signal from Nicole to come forward. A moment later, she retrieved the duffle and, with the rifle slung over her shoulder, waved him on. When he drew even with her, she whispered, “That was the only guard in sight, but that doesn’t mean he’s it. Be ready for anything.”

  Dan nodded, swallowing again. They moved down the corridor together.

  Seeing the man slumped against the wall, Dan immediately felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He swallowed a third time, and then shook his head angrily. You’re all in now, Dan, he told himself. Stop acting like the guy who opened the Lexus’ trunk. He’s gone now.

  That thought echoed in his mind for a second as they approached the fallen sentry. He’s gone, he thought again. Holy shit. He’s gone.

  Further reflection was interrupted as Nicole reached the guard. She looked down at him and saw that he was most thoroughly deceased. He’d fallen partially across the doorway, and she used her foot to shove him out of the way. Dan noticed she got a little blood on her expensive running shoe, and then cursed himself for worrying about that.

  The door looked like the sort often portrayed in movies as the entryway to a cell in an asylum from the days before mental illness was treated with anything resembling dignity and respect. It was made of heavy wood and seemed to visually define the word “sturdy.” It had a sliding bolt lock, which was old, made of heavy iron, about two inches from top to bottom and a full twelve inches long. There was a small hatch-type opening, about four inches square, also sporting a slide bolt. She reached up and pulled it back. It resisted for a moment, and then slid with a snap. Opening the little portal, she peered inside.

  A gasp escaped her unbidden.

  The light from the hallway was not bright, but it was sufficient to allow her to see that the room was literally crammed with women. The relative brilliance of the dim wall lighting caused some of them to blink, others to shield their eyes. Nicole saw that they were in various states of undress; a thin and dingy shift covered those that were the best dressed of the grim assembly.

  Without another thought, she pulled back the door’s main bolt, which like the small one moved with difficulty, and made a rather too-loud noise when it finally yielded. She pulled the door open.

  Dan had not been positioned to be able to see through the opening, so this was his first glimpse, and he too let out a gasp at what he saw. There were too many women to be able to distinguish one from another, but he could see that some were no more than girls.

  Then both of their eyes were drawn to a woman who, though seated in the midst of all the others, clearly stood apart from them all. Where the others were disheveled and slack, she was seated upright, staring not at the door but straight ahead, as if she had no interest in whoever was entering the chamber. Dan was taken by her beauty, even in her obviously diminished state. For all of her dignity, she was clearly not in perfect health. She looked dehydrated, and more than a little hungry.

  Nicole, of course, recognized the face of Ana Albu instantly. She had played out several scenarios in her mind as they’d made their way to this point, and one of them was finding the model very much as they had; with minimal resistance and prior to encountering any trace of her primary target. She had not anticipated the twenty or so other women with her. Nor the fact that some of them were nearly naked, and none of them were dressed in any way that leading them out of their prison and back through the hidden door and, ultimately up through the manhole was really feasible. They had no back up forces in place, no big van waiting to whisk this many women away to safety.

  Although Ana was wearing a simple dress that would not necessarily attract attention if they got her out, Nicole realized she could not leave the others behind and save only the model.

  She moved into the tiny room, stepping over a woman who was nude save for a filthy pair of panties, sprawled out on the floor. She moved in front of the model. Speaking Romanian, she addressed her.

  “Ana Albu, my name is Nicole. I mean to rescue you. I mean to rescue all of you.”

  There was a drone of quiet mumbling from the women, but Ana Albu did not look at her, instead staring straight ahead as before. Nicole reached out and put her hand on the woman’s shoulder.

  “Ana. Can you hear me? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” the beautiful model replied in a flat voice devoid of anything resembling hope. “It is too late to save me. They’ll be coming for me at any moment.”

  “I know. I know that you’re to be taken to the river. You’re to be sold. I mean to stop that from happening.”

  Slowly, the woman lifted her head, her eyes following an instant later, and she looked at Nicole for the first time.

  “I do not know you,” she said.

  “No, you don’t, but I know you.” She raised her voice to address the others. “I know all of you. I know what’s been done to you and what’s to become of you if we don’t get you out of here.”

  “Cole,” said Dan. She turned to see what he wanted. He pointed with both hands in two different directions, indicating the mounted cameras.

  “Of course there are cameras,” she groaned. Without warning, she fired off two suppressed shots, disabling each camera, but frightening the women in the process. Only Ana did not react. She did not even flinch.

  “Dan, we need to get these women out of here.”

  He nodded. “I know, but how? They’re practically naked.”

  “More than practically. We can’t bring them out to the park, but we can get them into the newer tunnels.”

  “Alright. That will buy a little time. But if they’re coming soon for Ana, we’d better move now.”

  Nicole reasoned that the women might be reluctant to listen to her, especially if she was telling them to do something that was obviously dangerous. By now, she was sure, most of them would have had the last spark of spirit beaten and raped out of them. They probably felt like the dogs in the old psychology experiment who were placed in metal cages and shocked with no way of escaping the charge, so that they eventually lay on the electrified floor and simply whimpered as the shocks were repeatedly administered. “Learned helplessness” it was called. She turned her attention to Ana once more.

  “Will you tell them? Will you tell them to follow us?”

  “Follow you where? Where will you take us? Who are you?”

  “I told you. I’m Nicole.”

  “Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

  “Not now, but I’m hoping that it will mean something eventually. I think I can save you all from Bogdan.”

  At the sound of Grigorescu’s name, there was a shuddering murmur from the women.

  Ana looked directly into Nicole’s eyes and held her gaze for a long time. Finally, she said, “I hear in your voice that you believe you can do this, that you can save us from this horrible man. Can you? He has many people working for him, and they are all cruel, they are all dangerous.”

  Dan had been listening intently to the conversation, and although he understood none of it, he was sensitive to the changing tone in both his wife’s voice and that of the young model. He was surp
rised when Nicole answered her in English.

  “I’m pretty goddamn dangerous too.” Nicole had no idea if Ana Albu spoke a word of English, but she quickly guessed the model knew at least a little, as her facial expression now changed for the first time since they’d arrived in the cell.

  At first, it seemed as though the muscles in her cheeks were trembling, as if trying to remember a long forgotten trick. But a moment later, the woman smiled and said in English, “I believe you are.”

  She stood and spoke in Romanian to the frightened women. “Something none of us thought possible has happened. These two people have come to get us out of here.”

  Again a buzz of muttering snaked through the group, and again Dan relied on the tenor of the voices to realize he was hearing undiluted, wordless fear.

  “I know, I know!” Ana said. “I am fearful as well. If we go with them, if we try to escape, we may be killed.”

  The babble increased, but Ana continued. “But if we do not go, we will surely either end up dead anyway or wish that we were.” That statement quieted them again. “I am going with them. Come with us.”

  A woman dressed in what could only be called rags, torn in such a way that her left breast was exposed, and apparently had been for so long that she made no attempt to cover herself, stood. “I will go too. I have no desire to let that man put his fat hands upon me again or to be sold to someone even worse. Yes, I will go too.”

  One after another, the other women began to stand. As they did, Dan saw that the situation was worse than he’d expected, for not only were all of them at least partially unclothed, many appeared to be in very poor health.

  “Jesus, Cole,” he began, but she whirled on him, placing her hand over his mouth.

  “No,” she said. “There’s no other option. They have no other chance. We’ll do what we can. Maybe in the maze of the modern tunnels, we can hide them long enough to… to figure out our next move, but we have got to get them out of here. Now!”