He moved out with the group, scanning the area for signs of life. So far, so good. He had four hours to see who was going to make the show. Then it was game time.
Katya led Marina back into the room, ignoring the looks of the men. She’d taken to keeping her head down, her hood pulled up, so that there was less to look at. But the Russian guards hadn’t had much in the way of women lately and had been guarding Marina for a couple of weeks. They had to be jacking off on a regular basis.
As always she led the girl to the bed for the evening. This evening though, she slid the blindfold off and held up her finger to her lips.
Marina blinked at the dim light in the room. The flickering kerosene lamp was probably the first light she’d seen in weeks. She looked frightened, too. She had to know that if they were caught there would be punishment. And it was almost time for Kurt’s evening check.
Katya gestured for her to take off her clothes and began stripping herself, fast. She’d checked, carefully, to make sure there were no video pickups in the room. As long as they weren’t heard they could get away with the switch.
Marina’s eyes widened in fear again and Katya paused and shook her head. She gestured to herself then the bed. Then she gestured to Marina and outside. Finally she leaned forward to the girl’s ear.
“Pull the hood up. Keep your head down. When you leave, turn right. Down the street three houses is a long building. Almost empty but some beds. Go in there and sit on the bed that has a blanket on it. Someone will come for you. Now strip and take my clothes.”
Marina pulled back and looked at her wide-eyed again then started to strip, fast.
The two changed clothes and, at the last moment, Katya applied the fake scar. She didn’t know what glue J had used but it still stuck to her chin. She hadn’t applied make-up on purpose. For one thing, Marina didn’t have any and for another she was afraid the scar wouldn’t hold if she did.
When both were changed she got in the bed, put on the blindfold and held her hands up to be shackled.
Marina had been tied up enough but she’d never done it. With some coaching, conducted in gestures, she managed to get the shackles on, tight but not too tight. Then she covered Katya with the blanket and left.
There was a chance that Kurt would notice the deception, but slight. He would expect to see the girl in the bed, as she always was.
Katya lay there, unmoving, as the girl left. There was no outcry so presumably she made it out of the building. Now to see if that blond killer would notice the exchange. If so she put her life expectancy as slightly lower than a snowflake in a fire. But that was the nature of the job. If she wanted safe she should have stayed in the caravanserai.
Marina kept her head down the whole way to the building. She had been in the town for two weeks and never seen it but she didn’t look around. What she did know was the sounds and they were normal. God keep that they stayed normal. This had been a nightmare. All she knew was that the men wanted her father to do something and that he had been cooperating. Given what he did for a living she could imagine what that might be.
She stopped at the door of the building she thought the whore, or the girl who acted the whore, meant. Opening it she saw that it was filled with beds and otherwise nearly empty. One had a blanket on it and she went over and sat down on it.
She wasn’t sure what to feel. She wasn’t tied up anymore but she also wasn’t free. There was no way she could get out of the town on her own. All she could do was hope. But it was more hope than she had had in weeks.
It was a seeming eternity before the door opened and a hugely fat man came in. She recalled that wheezing breath from when the new whore had been brought to the house. He was the girl’s pimp. Her pimp, now, for as long as she could pull off the deception.
“You’ve been sold,” the man said, wheezingly. “And the German says that you aren’t needed anymore. So come along.”
“Yes, sir,” Marina said, keeping her head down.
She followed the man out of the building to a nearly deserted café. There were only five men in the room, one a large, powerful looking man with the most evil face she had ever seen.
“This is the girl I told you about,” Yaroslav said, settling into an overstressed chair. “She is beautiful, no? Ten thousand euros.”
“I can barely see her face and nothing of her body,” the man replied. “A thousand.”
“It is a cold, wet night and I am tired,” Yaroslav said. “Nine thousand or I take her back.”
The haggling was brief. They settled at six thousand.
“No profit for me but I finally have these damned women off my hands,” Yaroslav sighed, taking the money. “I think it is time to find a better place for business.”
“Wherever you go you seem to find women dropped on you,” the man said, standing up and taking Marina by the wrist. “If you try to run, bitch, I will pound you into a pulp.”
“I won’t run,” Marina promised. Had she been released from the men holding her only to be sold as a whore? Was that why the girl had changed with her? But, if so, where had that fake scar come from.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The President walked into the Situation Room carrying a fresh cup of coffee. He settled into his seat and just sat there, eyes closed, head down. Possibly praying, possibly just preparing his mind for the day. Or both. After a moment he looked up at the Air Force major in charge of Predator data.
“What’s our status on the Predators?” the president asked.
“We have two… on station, Mr. President,” the major said, nervously. “We have one more on the way to the target area.”
“I thought we had four?” the president said, calmly.
“One crashed on the way to the target, sir,” the major replied with a gulp. “There’s a major storm in the area. We don’t actually have observation of the target area. The Predators are flying blind. The pilots inform me they’re just trying to keep them in the air, much less get a view of the operation.”
“And if we push them down under the cloud cover, even if we could, we’re likely to blow the operation,” the Secretary of Defense pointed out.
“Mike will call, one way or the other, as soon as the mission condition is clear,” the Secretary of State said. She would not normally have been in on a situation like this, but not only did she have an excellent background in the field, she had after all previously been the National Security Advisor, she had been deeply involved in missions involving Mike Harmon from the beginning. There was no way the President was going to deal with something like this without her in the room.
“So we have to depend on him to make the call,” the President pointed out. “But without a clear view, how do we know where to drop if we have to?”
“It’s not exactly a precision weapon, Mr. President,” the Secretary of Defense pointed out. “Close counts.”
The man dragged Marina outside and into a Lada that had seen better days. It started though with an unusually powerful growl and the man drove rapidly to the north.
“Call me Boris if anyone asks,” the man said in a friendly manner. “And try to continue to act scared. My name, though, is Captain Illyan of the Russian Intelligence Bureau. We’ll be through the first Russian checkpoint in about an hour or so. After that you can feel safe. Welcome back, by the way.”