From other inmates he learned that the average wait to see a judge for someone whose case had not been sped up by bribes or political corruption was between two and four years. Valentin Kovalenko knew he did not have two to four years. When the other inmates in his cell learned who he was, a former high-ranking member of Russian intelligence, he would likely be beaten to death within two to four minutes.
Most residents of Matrosskaya Tishina were no great fans of the government.
This threat of exposure and then reprisal had been used effectively by Kovalenko’s enemies outside the prison, mostly at the Federal’naya Sluzhba Besopasnosti, Russian internal security, because it ensured that their inconvenient prisoner would keep his mouth shut while on the inside.
In the first month or two of incarceration Kovalenko had had sporadic contact with his frantic and confused wife, and in their brief phone conversations he’d only assured her that everything would be straightened out and that she had nothing to worry about.
But his wife stopped coming to the prison, and then she stopped calling. And then, he had been told by the assistant warden, his wife had filed for dissolution of the marriage and full custody of his children.
But this was not the worst news. Rumors began filtering down to Kovalenko that no one was working on his case. It was frustrating no one was on his defense, but the fact no one was working on his prosecution was even more ominous. He was just sitting here, in a cage, rotting away.
He worried he would be dead of disease inside of six months.
As the gurney turned to the right and rolled under a recessed light in the ceiling, Kovalenko looked at the guards. He did not recognize any of them, but to him they appeared to be just as robotic as the rest of the staff here. He knew he would get no useful information from them, but out of growing panic he shouted again as they took him through another gate that led out of his cell block and into an administrative portion of the facility.
In another moment he was wheeled into the prison infirmary.
Valentin Kovalenko knew what was happening. He’d imagined this. He expected this. He could have penned the script for this event himself. The late-night rousing. The leather bindings on the gurney with the squeaky wheels. The silent guards and the trip into the bowels of the prison.
He was about to be executed. In secret and in defiance of the law, his enemies were going to remove him from their list of worries.
The massive infirmary was empty of doctors, nurses, or any prison employees except for the men who rolled his gurney, and this reconfirmed Kovalenko’s fears. He’d been taken here once before, when a guard’s rubber club had opened a wound on his face that needed stitches, and even though that had happened late at night, the medical facility had been well staffed.
Tonight, however, it appeared as though someone had cleared out any witnesses.
Valentin fought against his wrist and ankle straps in vain.
The four guards rolled him into an exam room that appeared to be empty, and then they backed out of the doorway, shutting the door behind them and leaving him in the dark, bound and helpless. Kovalenko shouted as they left, but when the door closed, he looked around in the low light. To his right was a rolling curtain partition, and behind this he could hear movement.
He was not alone.
Kovalenko asked, “Who’s there?”
“Who are you? What is this place?” replied a gruff male voice. The man sounded like he was just on the other side of the partition, also on a gurney, perhaps.
“Look around, fool! This is the infirmary. I asked who you are?”
Before the man behind the curtain answered, the door opened again, and two men entered. Both wore lab coats, and both were older than Kovalenko. He put them in their fifties. Valentin had never seen them before but assumed them to be doctors.
Both men looked nervous.
Neither doctor regarded Kovalenko on his gurney by the door as they passed by. They then removed the curtain partition, rolling it out of the way up against the wall, giving Kovalenko a view of the rest of the space. In the faint light he saw another man on a gurney; the second prisoner’s body below the shoulders was covered by a sheet, but he was clearly bound by his hands and feet much the same as was Kovalenko.
The other prisoner looked at the doctors now. “What is this? Who are you?”
Valentin wondered what was wrong with the man. Who are you? Was it not clear where he was and who they were? The better question would have been “What the hell is going on?”
“What the hell is going on?” Kovalenko shouted at the two older men, but they ignored him and walked now to the foot of the other prisoner’s bed.
One of the doctors had a black canvas bag on his shoulder, and he reached into the bag and took out a syringe. With a quiver in his hands and a tightness in his jaw that Valentin could register even in the dim, the man popped the cap off the syringe, and then he lifted the sheet off the bare feet of the other prisoner.
“What the fuck are you doing? Don’t touch me with—”
The doctor took hold of the man’s big toe while Kovalenko watched in horror and utter confusion. Valentin quickly looked up at the prisoner and saw similar bewilderment on the man’s face.
It took the doctor with the syringe a moment to separate the skin from the nail at the tip of the man’s toe, but as soon as he accomplished this he jabbed the needle deep under the nail and pressed the plunger.
The man screamed in terror and pain as Kovalenko looked on.
“What is that?” Valentin demanded. “What are you doing to this man?”
The needle came out of the toe, and the doctor tossed the syringe into the bag. He wiped the site with an alcohol prep pad, and then he and his colleague just stood at the foot of both gurneys, their eyes fixed on the man to Valentin’s right.
Kovalenko realized the other man had fallen silent. He looked over at his face again and saw confusion, but before Valentin’s eyes the face contorted in sudden and sharp pain.
Through clenched teeth the prisoner growled, “What did you do to me?”
The two doctors just stood there, watching, tension in their own faces.
After a moment more the man on the gurney began thrashing against his bindings; his hips rose high in the air and his head jerked from side to side.
Valentin Kovalenko shouted for help at the top of his lungs.
Foam and spit came out of the agonized man’s mouth, followed by a guttural moan. He kept convulsing at the limit of his straps, as if he was trying in vain to expel whatever toxin had been injected into him.
It took the prisoner a slow, torturous minute to die. When he stilled, when his body came to rest contorted but restrained by the straps, the man’s wide eyes seemed to stare right at Kovalenko.
The ex — SVR assistant rezident looked toward the doctors. His voice was hoarse from his shouting. “What did you do?”
The man with the bag on his shoulder stepped over to the foot of Kovalenko’s gurney and reached inside his bag.
As he did this, the other man pulled the bedsheet off Kovalenko’s legs and feet.
Valentin screamed again, his voice cracking and faltering. “Listen to me! Just listen! Don’t touch me! I have associates who will pay you… pay you or kill you if you—”
Valentin Kovalenko shut up when he saw the pistol.
From out of the bag the doctor had retrieved not a syringe, but instead a small stainless-steel automatic, and he leveled it at Kovalenko. The other man stepped up to the gurney and began unfastening the bindings around the younger Russian’s arms and legs. Kovalenko lay there quietly, sweat alternately stinging his eyes and chilling him where it had dampened the sheets.