Nikolai Ievlev watched Sasha Volkovets’s Moskvich drive away and the dark brown Zhiguli take off after it.
That’s all right, the major mentally addressed the four goons in the Zhiguli. That’s all right, shitheads. We’ll cut you off at the intersection, and good. Unfortunately, not at the roots.
It had been dark for a while. There were only a few lights on in the gloomy five-story Veterans Home. Pale yellow patches of lights flickered randomly, falling on the black wall of the snow-drifted taiga.
The taiga came up very close to this side of the building, but they weren’t watching it from that direction. They should be waiting for Polyanskaya around here, in the tall, dense bushes that grew along the main drive. And they were. When the sound of the dark brown Zhiguli’s engine had died down, Ievlev picked up on a rustle, and the black mass of bushes stirred.
He glanced at his watch dial. In ten minutes, Polyanskaya would come out of the building and walk down this drive flanked by the black bushes. They might let her walk on a little bit, rather than attack right away. But there was another possibility. In their place he would have lost patience long ago.
Ievlev knew that very soon, a hundred meters from here, an army vehicle would stop. He listened to the roar of the infrequent cars going down the highway, trying to pick out the distinctive rumble of its engine. The SWAT team, five men from the local Security Service, were prepared to go into action at a moment’s notice. The faintest noise, let alone a gunshot, would be an automatic signal for them.
His old leather boots were soaked through with melting snow, and the cold had permeated his body. Ievlev was dying for a cigarette or a cup of steaming hot tea. He thought about the fact that the bad guys they caught wouldn’t talk or give up their boss for all the tea in China. Life’s worth more than any tea.
That’s the way it was always going to be. The foot soldiers would keep quiet and sweat it out in prisons all across the country. And the bosses would continue to rule their fiefdoms—large swaths of this enormous country, with its gold and oil, its poppy and flax fields, its crooks and prostitutes, its people’s artists and members of government—with an iron hand. That’s the way it was always going to be. Nothing was going to change just because he, Major Ievlev, was sitting here now, soaked through and shaking, on the outskirts of an ancient Siberian town, waiting—for either a stray bullet or pneumonia to strike him down. Even if he could get the thugs hiding across the way to talk, nothing was going to change.
A faint whistle came from the bushes opposite. In the distance, on the highway, the army vehicle’s motor quietly came to life. A long shadow dashed across the pale light of the streetlamp. The butt of a gun smashed into the major’s head from behind, sending him sprawling onto the crumbly snow. Ievlev managed to grab his adversary’s left wrist in a reflexive motion, and his right hand was fumbling at the safety of his pistol when there was a deafening explosion. A hundred meters away on the highway, something blazed up, for a long second lighting up the low sky over the pines and a corner of the five-story brick building.
For that brief instant Major Ievlev hesitated, and a blade struck his heart. The last thing he saw was a whitish, blurry patch of moon through a layer of night clouds and the black, gnarled branches of shrubbery.
“Thank you, Valentina Yurievna. It’s time for me to go,” Lena said, standing up and putting on her jacket.
“How can you go alone so late, child? I thought someone was picking you up.”
“I’ll be fine.” Lena smiled. “The bus runs until twelve. It’s only ten thirty now.”
There was a boom in the distance. For a second, the blackness out the window was lit by a pale light. The windows tinkled.
“Did you hear that, Lena dear? What is it?” the old woman asked, frightened.
“It sounded like an explosion.” Lena stopped by the door. “Yes, it sounded very much like an explosion.”
“It must be an accident on the highway. Do you want me to call someone to walk you to the bus?”
“Thank you. Please don’t bother anyone. I’ll get there myself.”
After saying good-bye to Valentina Yurievna, Lena went out into the empty hall. Now it all fits, she thought as she walked down the runner. For some reason what’s hardest to believe isn’t that Volkov raped and murdered those girls or that Regina Gradskaya unleashed this entire operation to erase any traces just for his sake. What’s hardest of all to believe is that Regina is Valentina Yurievna’s daughter. Her only daughter.
The floorboards under the thick runner creaked ever so slightly behind Lena. Before she could look around, something hard was resting between her shoulder blades. Even through her sweater and leather jacket, Lena could feel the distinct chill of a gun barrel.
“Don’t struggle or yell,” a man’s voice whispered in her ear. “Keep walking forward, calmly and slowly. Don’t do what I say, and I’ll shoot. That’s it. Good job. Now take your hands out of your pockets. Smart girl. Now down the stairs. Don’t look around.”
She went down, step by step. Her head was spinning, her mouth had dried up, and her legs were like cotton wool. One flight and then another. The guard should be there, by the entrance. But she wouldn’t be able to cry out. No, they were taking her to another exit, the service door most likely.
“Now to the right,” the man with the gun gave her a little push with the barrel into a blind, dark opening.
A second later, someone deftly twisted her arms behind her back, and Lena felt something cold and metal on her wrists. The handcuffs clicked.
A car was parked right by the service entrance. They shoved Lena into an enormous SUV, and she found herself in the back seat between two goons she couldn’t get a good look at in the dark. What she could tell was that there were five of them in all. When the car started up, one of the ones sitting next to her, with the deft movement of a magician, took a rag out of his pocket and blindfolded Lena, pulling a few strands of hair so it hurt.
“Could you be a little more careful?” Lena said. She didn’t recognize her own voice.
“Pardon me,” a goon apologized politely.
“You pulled my hair into the knot and it hurts,” she told him calmly. “What can I see in this darkness anyway?”
“If you’re going to run your mouth, we’ll knock you out!” one of her neighbors snapped.
But something came over Lena. For some reason, in this situation it was scarier not to talk than to talk. The sound of her own voice was soothing. Each time she heard it, it was like a confirmation that she was still alive.
“If you planned to knock me out, you’d have done it a long time ago,” she reasoned out loud. “But so far you’ve treated me politely. And I would be grateful if you would both tie that knot more carefully and let me smoke.”
“I like this one!” someone sitting up front said. “Listen, Turnip, retie that knot for her and give her a cigarette.”
The one they called Turnip fussed with the knot. A minute later she heard the click of a lighter. They brought a cigarette to Lena’s lips.
“Are we going far?” Lena asked.
“The more you know, the sooner you die,” came the answer from the front seat.
They drove for an hour and a half. That whole long way, not another word was spoken. They popped in a cassette, and a singer from a famous pop group started singing a sad song about prison and love.
If they’d wanted to kill me, Lena thought, they’d have done it right away. It’s probably a good thing they blindfolded me. That means I may still get out of this alive. They don’t blindfold dead men. Why bother, it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone if he sees something. No, these can’t be Gradskaya’s men. They would have killed me straightaway. She had one goaclass="underline" to kill me, Lena reasoned. I wonder what blew up on the highway? And what became of Ievlev?