by S L Shelton
The blonde girl leaned back, smiling at me, and patted the seat next to her. I wasn’t even a little tempted. This was going to get out of hand soon—I could tell.
“I will,” I said. “Just need to find the bathroom first.”
Elvis pointed over his shoulder toward the foyer without looking away from the girls.
As the music played, thumping its vibration against my chest through the tall speaker, the girls began to strip. Elvis was reclined on his cushion like the King of Persia, and I was doing my best to stay out of the living room as I explored the house. I slipped through the back of the kitchen as the girl-girl dance became more intimate.
Off the back of the kitchen was a garage, and off to the rear of the garage was a door to the very large boathouse. It was more of a covered dock, but it could easily cover a seventy-foot boat with room left over for several smaller ones.
As I stepped onto the concrete outside, I suddenly felt very exposed.
I was nearly to the dock when something hit me on my head. My body failed me, and I could hear myself saying “Shit”—although I don’t know for sure if I actually spoke it—and blackness filled my sight like light receding in a tunnel.
**
When I came to, I was laying on the living room floor with the cold of the stone against my cheek. I could hear my own pulse in my head along with the crying of the two girls and the pleas coming from Elvis.
“Interpol was at my door!” I heard Elvis pleading.
“And party with whores is supposed to hide you from them?” a man with a deep voice growled back at him.
“Nyet! We were staying out of sight!” Elvis complained. “There are—” His words were cut off by a loud slap, which I heard but could not see. Elvis fell to the ground in front of me. His hands were raised in front of him. I had the distinct impression that a gun was being pointed at him, an assumption reinforced by the sudden increase in the hysteria of the girls whimpering.
I looked up to get a glimpse of the other man. But as I moved, a lightning bolt of pain shot down the back of my head to explode into an almost burning sensation at the top of my neck. I moaned. Mistake.
I saw the bottom of a boot descending in almost slow motion toward my face. There was pressure on the front of my skull, starting between my eyes and radiating outward, and then blackness swallowed me again.
**
NICK HORIATIS sat in his sedan outside the safe house. There had been no activity at the house all day. Some incomplete satellite data had indicated the Russians had been playing host to an unknown group the week before, but there was no indication anyone was there at all now.
He was not happy to be stuck alone watching Russian mob hangouts. He had a feeling there was action going on somewhere, and he wanted to be in the middle of it. Normally techs would be sent to survey a location like this, not a trained field operative, but manpower was stretched thin—he’d drawn the short straw on the Russians.
Shortly before sunset, one of the Russian mobsters had showed up at the house with a car full of people. He’d snapped a picture of the occupants as they drove by and then sent them to Langley. Less than a half an hour later, another car had rolled up, parked outside the gate, and sat for a few minutes. The angle was wrong, so Nick couldn’t get a photograph.
When the mystery driver emerged from his vehicle, he climbed over the wall instead of going through the gate. Something is going down, Nick thought to himself, and he dialed the number for his boss.
“Temple,” the voice at the other end answered.
“I’ve got some activity here at the Russian safe house,” he replied without identifying himself.
“Serb?” John Temple asked.
“I don’t know yet, but something is cooking. Someone just climbed over the wall, and a little while ago, a car pulled up with what looked like two whores and two men,” he replied. “I sent the photos to Langley.”
“Can you get audio on the house?” Temple asked.
“No. The wall is blocking the directional,” he responded, referring to the high pickup directional microphone, “unless you want me to go in. I’ll be happy to do that.”
“No. Observe only. Wait until we get a hit back on the photos,” Temple said.
Nick groaned at the thought of having to continue to wait, but he acknowledged his orders. “Yeah. Fine,” he said.
“Keep me posted,” Temple said and then hung up.
A little more than an hour later, he got a message from Langley. It read:
“No ID on the girls. The image wasn’t clear enough. The driver is Yefim ‘Elvis’ Sobelev. Brother of Rodka Sobelev, owner of the house. Russian mob. The second guy we got a hit on with a passport photo. US citizen. Scott Wolfe. Arrived today from the US, putting him on top of the pile of flagged individuals. No rap sheet.”
No rap sheet my ass, Nick thought. You don’t hang out with the Russian mob if you’re law abiding...unless you are a captive.
Nick forwarded the message to John Temple and waited for instructions. A few moments later, he got his reply. The message read:
Tag their phones. All communications in and out. Law-abiding American citizens don’t pal around with Russian mob.
Shit, Nick thought. What will it take for him to let me go in?
seven
Four Days Until Event
The wee hours of the morning, Wednesday, May 12th, 2010—Amsterdam, Netherlands
I was feeling utter helplessness and despair. I was on a rock face, somewhere in the dark, and I felt like crying out, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate. I was holding onto Barb’s wrist, but she was slipping away. I felt so weak.
She looked up at me. “Let me go,” she said.
I was already losing my grip; my fingers were so small that they didn’t even go all the way around her arm.
“No,” I croaked in a weak voice.
She reached up with her free hand and began prying my fingers off her wrist. My other hand hurt, the stone it was hooked on was digging painfully into my palm as I tried to bear her weight, but she managed to slip her fingers under my thumb and pry it loose. My heart contracted painfully as she plummeted into the darkness below, silently falling away from me, staring at my face with accusing eyes.
From the chasm below me, I heard Barb crying. “I had to leave,” she said. “I can’t count on you to be there for me.” I couldn’t see her, but I could feel her drifting away from me until I didn’t feel her presence at all.
There I sat in silence, peering into the black, hoping to catch some glimpse of movement when suddenly, another voice came to me—It was mine, laughing.
“You have to look at the numbers, idiot,” the voice said.
“Numbers won’t bring back the dead,” I screamed back defiantly.
“No, stupid. Look at the numbers,” it replied.
In my mind, my ‘other voice’ showed me the floor in brief flashes, like a slide show.
It was the floor I had been on when I woke the last time for a few seconds.
A bag on the floor, contents strewn.
Broken glass.
White powder scattered like snow on everything.
Clothes in a heap.
I saw naked female feet.
I saw the iron leg of the table.
I saw a boot, a leg, a belt, a phone.
The phone...it was glowing and pulsing, like a black plastic heart laying on the floor. I understood.
“Now you’ve got it,” my other voice said. “Now, WAKE UP!”
I woke again. This time I was sitting upright and as my eyes fluttered open, I realized I was in the garage, sitting in one of those sturdy, high-backed wooden chairs from the dining room.
My arms wouldn’t move. My first thought was that the blows to my head had paralyzed me, but as the fog cleared, I realized that my arms and legs had been duct taped to the chair, preventing anything but the most modest of movement. Though I couldn’t look down to confirm it, the cold air settling on my chest and belly told me that my s
hirt was missing, evoking a sudden wave of vulnerability—as if being taped to the chair wasn’t enough.
The space was dark except for the light over a workbench in front of me. There I saw Elvis cradling his left arm with his right hand. I couldn’t see the girls, but I could hear them sniffling and sobbing in the dark. The other man had his back to me, but I could see something under his arm.
He shifted to one side long enough to reveal that he had a small canister, about the size of a two-liter bottle of soda, tucked under his elbow and that he was awkwardly twisting something on the top. My heart contracted hard in my chest as I realized it was a propane torch. Fear flooded my body as he turned, looked at me, and then set his gun on the workbench before grabbing a spark striker.
“Ah. Good. You’re awake,” he said as he walked toward me. “Let’s see how much the CIA knows, shall we?” He squeezed the striker and the nozzle on the canister leapt to life, yellow and orange flame shooting out with a tiny cone of blue flame at the base.
“I’m not CIA,” I heard myself say, but it didn’t sound like me. My voice was broken and gravelly.
He laughed. “It’s funny. Every CIA agent you ask, ‘Are you CIA?’ says, ‘No. Not CIA,’” he said as he walked toward me. “It makes you wonder if there are actually any CIA agents at all. And yet, I know they are out there somewhere...so let’s start with you.”
He let the flame come within inches of the side of my face and then slowly lowered it down to my shoulder, where the heat started to melt away the hair on my upper arm. Then the pain came. I felt, though I could not see, ice so cold that it penetrated all the way to my bones, and then pain exploded up and down my arm. I smelled my hair and flesh. I screamed and he lifted the torch.
“So. Are you CIA yet?” he asked calmly as if he were in no hurry. He could do this all night if he had to.
I was sobbing. I tried to turn my head to see the burn but my head was held tight against the back of the chair with tape. “No. Not CIA.”
Tell him Barb was on the boat, I heard someone with my voice whisper into my ear.
He leaned in for another pass with the torch.
“No!” I yelled. “No. My girlfriend was on the boat. I came because my girlfriend died,” I spit out desperately.
He paused, looking at my face, and then he cocked his head to the side. “How did you find this place?” he asked suspiciously.
The phone, said the other me in my ear.
I hesitated. He leaned forward with the torch again. The flame licked at my chest this time. This time I felt the heat. “Her phone!” I screamed, trying to turn away from the pain, but I was held firmly in place by the layers of tape.
He withdrew the flame. “What about her phone?” he asked calmly.
“I called it after the explosion. It rang and rang and then went to voicemail. So I knew it wasn’t destroyed,” I lied, not wanting to give away all my secrets. “I hoped there was a mistake, that she was in the hospital or something. So I came to find her.”
The man laughed at me. “So you are love sick puppy? How sweet.” Then he leaned forward again. “You still did not answer the question. How did you find this place?”
I paused for a long moment. He raised his eyes to let me know he was waiting for me to finish. Behind him I could see Elvis reaching for the gun on the bench.
Elvis! Are you going to shoot me? I wondered. Do away with me before he figures out you were supposed to get rid of that phone?
The man raised the torch again, searing more skin from my chest. I howled in agony as I pictured my flesh bubbling, crisping, and then burning away, the scent of scorched flesh—my flesh—filling my nostrils. Suddenly, a thought seemed to occur to him before he abruptly stood and then turned toward Elvis.
As he pivoted, a shot rang out, echoing off the concrete walls of the enclosed space. It was quieter than I thought it would be—no more than a muffled pop. I was amazed that I hadn’t even felt the bullet penetrate my flesh…until the man who had been torturing me dropped his torch and crumpled backward, his head hitting my knee as he fell to the floor. As the screams from the girls filled my ears, I realized I hadn’t been shot after all.
There was a gurgling sound coming from the man’s throat and he turned his head toward Elvis as the dark-haired hood stared at him from the workbench.
The girls began crying more loudly as Elvis walked over to me, slowly, the gun in his hand shaking as if it were somehow trying to escape his grasp. He was pale, staring down at the dying man as he came to a halt in front of him. The man on the floor looked at Elvis with fury in his eyes, his wound oozing dark red across his throat, chest, and then onto the floor.
“Picko jedna!” the man rasped out with a spatter of blood. Elvis raised the gun again, his hand suddenly steady as iron resolve seemed to aim it that time, and he put another round through the head of the big man. Clack! The man twitched once and then was still. Elvis spat on him before dropping the gun on his chest and then stood there, staring at the body on floor for a long time.
“You tricked me,” he said finally, calmly before turning to look at me.
He squatted down and looked me in the face for a few seconds, as if trying to decide what he should do with me. “But then you let him cook you instead of giving me up.” He continued his stare for a moment longer and then leaned close. “The girl with the phone…she was your girlfriend?” he asked.
I tried to nod, but my head wouldn’t move. “Yes,” I said, barely audible.
Elvis pulled his switchblade from his pocket, smiled at me, and then raised the knife to my head. It felt as if my heart had sunk into my feet.
This is it, I thought as I felt the cold of the blade on the side of my neck.
I was not going to save Barb, I was not going to marry her and have beautiful children running through the sprinklers on a warm summer day. I could actually hear them laughing and squealing as they hopped through the water on a green lawn behind a white house. I could smell the grass and a charcoal fire in the barbecue. Oh wait…that’s my burnt chest I smell.
But the darkness didn’t come.
Instead, my heavy head flopped over as Elvis sawed and cut at the tape that bound me to the chair.
“A man who would do all this for love must be respected,” he said as he sliced at the tape on my arms. “And a man who would face flame for woman one second and then face it again for me the next is a friend,” he continued as he freed my legs.
When he was done and the tape gave way, I fell to the side. He rushed to catch me. “You are my friend, Alex,” he said as he helped me to my feet.
“Scott,” I said, correcting him. “My name is Scott.”
Elvis smiled. “You are my friend, Scott. I am Yefim.”
He helped me walk back into the house and then sat me down on the couch. A pain shot up my side, and I reached for my ribs.
“He kicked you many times while you were unconscious. We thought he had killed you.”
I finally got a chance to look at my chest, arm, and shoulder where the big man had torched me. I had expected to see charred skin and gaping, burned holes in my flesh, but found instead only some large angry red blisters with a dark spot at the center.
I breathed a sigh of relief, though the pain was still excruciating.
“Let’s get you fixed up.” Elvis said, and then he motioned for the dark-haired girl to come to me. “Go get first aid kit in kitchen,” he said to the other girl.
The dark-haired girl sat next to me and leaned over to look at my wounds.
“Not so bad,” she said, but I could tell from her brief expression of shock that she was lying. Then she touched my ribs, sending a jolt of pain through my side and shoulder, resulting in a second flash of pain through my head and neck when I tensed.
“You’ll live,” she said and then looked up and smiled at me warmly. “I’m Nyla.” Her lip was puffy on one side, and her right eye displayed a blue bruise.
She had put on a man’s button-down shi
rt to cover her previously naked breasts but had not buttoned it. I watched them as they swayed while she worked on cleaning and bandaging my wounds. The softness of her touch and absence of modesty was comforting, calming.
Elvis was speaking Russian on the phone on the other side of the vast living room. When he completed his call, he walked back over and joined us on the couch. “Nyla is good. No? She always fixes wounds for the family—I think she was doctor in other life,” he said.
Nyla smiled. “A nurse school dropout—in this life,” she corrected as she fussed with my wounds.
“I don’t think they teach you how remove bullets and fix stabbing wound in Portuguese nurse school,” he said jokingly. Elvis looked back at me with a serious gaze. “The big man. His name was Majmun. Serb. He was here to ‘sanitize’ the house. He was going to kill us all. But he wanted to know who you were first.”
I nodded in understanding. The blonde came and joined us on the couch, smoking a joint. She took a deep hit and then passed it to Nyla after she had deftly applied a gauze bandage to my chest. Nyla took a drag and then offered it to me. When I declined, she pushed it back to me.
“For the pain,” she said plainly. I let her put it to my mouth, and I took a deep drag, coughing most of it out and eliciting a burst of laughter from my underworld hosts.
“American can’t hold his smoke.” Elvis said through a chuckle as he pulled out his phone.
Nyla shushed him before inhaling a deep hit from it herself and then leaned over me, placing her thumb on my chin to open my mouth. Her lips touched mine before she blew the cooler smoke into my mouth. I inhaled as her mouth pressed gently, sealing mine with her full lips. It was cooler, gentler this time, allowing me to hold it for a moment before I blew it out in a long, silken stream of white mist.
Nyla smiled softly as relaxation washed over me like warm water flowing over cold hands in the winter. After staring at me for a moment and seeing me relax into the cushions of the sofa, she nodded in satisfaction before handing the joint back to the blonde girl.
“I called Sobaka. He will be here in while to help clean and dispose of ‘Monkey,’” he said, referring to the big man’s nickname. “Nyla will take you home. Maria will stay and help me and Sobaka. Then we will all pretend this did not happen.”
