There’s something I have to tell you about her, Remi had said.
Had Kristijan had sex with this woman? She was leaning close to him, smiling up at him, as if she expected him to kiss her thin red lips. “You smell of the sea, Kristijan. A new cologne?”
Neven removed her hand from his chest. “I won’t pretend I’m pleased to see you,” he said shortly. “There’s only one reason you can be here.”
Her smile faded. The eyes narrowed. “Very well,” she said. Her voice was low, the timbre deep for a woman. It might even have been sexy if she wanted it to be. Instead, she turned away. As she moved, Neven’s gaze was pulled to the double breasted front of her suit jacket. It was buttoned closed. Only, as she turned, the lapels spread open, giving him a clear view inside the jacket. She was wearing nothing beneath but a filmy black lace bra. Her nipples were dark, wide circles beneath the lace.
Sofiya walked around the desk and sat in the big leather chair.
Neven couldn’t help glancing at Remi. The Frenchman raised his brows a fraction. His face remained impassive. He moved around Neven and slumped against the wall, his arms crossed. It looked like he was relaxing, yet the position was a strategic one; two strides and he would reach the big chair, with nothing in between to stop him.
Sofiya Sorokin shifted her head to take in where Remi was standing. She smiled as she brought her attention back to Neven. She knew what Remi was doing, too. Remi had said she was good.
Still looking as if he was merely passing time, Remi reached out to the cupboard next to him and picked up an apple from the basket there and tossed it in his hands. It wasn’t as if he could eat it, although Sofiya wouldn’t know that. Neven stared at the apple rolling in the air and remembered the beer bottle Remi had flung at the shoplifter in the village square, two days ago.
Remi was armed, but Sofiya wouldn’t know that, either.
“Business,” Sofiya said shortly. “Arkady was disappointed to hear that your projections show a net loss. What alarmed him, though, was some loose talk about shutting down the operation. I’m here to make sure the shipment goes through.” She sat in the chair and lifted her feet, to cross the ankles and rest the block-heeled sandals on the desk, right on top of the closed laptop.
Remi didn’t move to rescue the laptop, so Neven stayed still, too.
“Direct enough for you, Kristijan?” Sofiya asked sweetly.
“You are direct,” Neven agreed. “While you are being direct, do you want to tell me who told Usenko about the projections?”
She smiled. It thinned her lips even more. “You will show me the stock,” she said. “I will see for myself that all is still in order and that you haven’t done anything foolish since looking at your pretty spreadsheet.”
She had seen the spreadsheet then. Why hadn’t Neven considered the idea that Usenko would have a mole planted in his household? Maybe Kristijan had known about whoever it was. Maybe Remi had suspected. He had been vocal about not sharing the spreadsheet with the lieutenants. Was that why?
Neven drew a calming breath. “Everything is still in place,” he told her shortly. He recalled the meeting with Kristijan’s lieutenants, when they had discussed the missing prisoners. Had that made its way to Usenko, too?
Sofiya put her feet back on the ground and sat up. “I would determine that for myself, Kristijan.”
“You don’t trust me.” He tried to sound upset about it and couldn’t. It came out flat.
She smiled. “Of course I don’t! How foolish of you. This is just business. You know how it goes. A seed of doubt can ruin a lifetime of work. Let’s stamp out this ugly rumor. Show me the stock.”
“I can arrange for a car for tomorrow morning,” Neven said.
“Now,” she replied, getting to her feet.
Neven considered, trying to figure out how Kristijan would have reacted to that bald demand. “Very well. Now,” he told her. “Once you’ve seen the stock, though, you get on whatever plane you used to get here and go back to Usenko. Trust is a two way street, Sofiya. I don’t trust you, either.”
Sofiya came around the desk, smiling. She patted Neven’s cheek, her long fingernails scraping unpleasantly against his cheek. “I’ll return when I’m fully satisfied that everything is as it should be,” she told him.
Satisfied.
Neven hid his shudder. Was she throwing sex into the deal, now?
Remi straightened up from the wall. “I’ll have Dragović bring the car around,” he murmured and walked quickly out of the office. Neven envied him his escape. The urge to run away from this woman was one of the strongest he’d ever experienced.
* * * * *
The rain had stopped by the time they walked out the front door for their expedition to the shipment…wherever that was. Neven was about to find out. He would have been pleased, except for Sofiya Sorokin.
The limousine waiting for them at the front of the house was a long stretch one, with plenty of room for the three of them. A second, ordinary black sedan was lined up behind the limousine.
Remi climbed into the limousine and settled on the bench next to the wide door, as Sofiya took the back corner. She looked at Remi steadily. “You can sit in the front.”
Remi looked at Neven and raised his brow.
Neven stayed as Kristijan and jerked his head, telling him to get out, although the last thing he wanted was to be left alone with this woman.
Remi’s expression didn’t change. He got out and shut the door, then settled in the front with the driver. From the driver’s profile, Neven thought it was Dragović. The driver didn’t turn his head to look at Sofiya, or even glance at Neven in the rearview mirror. He kept his eyes on the long nose of the car.
“Glass!” Sofiya called.
Remi tapped something on the dash and a thick sheet of glass rose up behind the front seat. It was dark on this side. Neven wondered if the other side was mirrored.
It left them neatly isolated.
The car rolled forward, tires crunching on the gravel drive in front of the big house, then picked up speed. Neven pulled out his cellphone and opened a text message.
Sofia sorokin. Usenko’s. Details asap.
Sofiya’s long fingers reached for the phone. Neven deleted the text, just getting his fingertip onto the delete key before she pulled the phone out of his hands. “Do you not know how rude it is to stare at your phone when you have company?” she said.
“I have a business to run, while you’re insisting on this merry-go-round,” he said coldly.
She looked down at the phone, then held it out to him. “Unlock it,” she demanded. The lift of her arm opened the long coat she was wearing. An ugly black gun sat in a holster stitched to the lining of the coat.
Neven pulled his gaze away from the weapon and look at his phone. The home screen had popped up with a request for his password. Relieved, Neven just stared at her.
Sofiya smiled and cracked open the back of the phone. She drew out the phone card with the tip of a fingernail, then carefully broke it in two and dumped the pieces in the empty champagne bucket swinging from the hinged bracket mounted on the window sill next to her.
Still smiling, she handed the pieces of Neven’s phone back to him. “I would have your undivided attention while we conclude our business.”
Neven took the phone back, clipped the back in place and put it in his pocket, hiding his dismay. He stiffened as Sofiya slid around the U-shaped bench until her hip was up against his. She put her lips next to his ear. “We’re alone now.”
“I’m glad you think so,” he said, glancing at the smoky glass and the dark shape of Remi sitting in the passenger seat.
“They don’t count,” she said dismissively, her hand on his knee. “Since when did you care who was watching?”
Neven absorbed that. Kristijan had apparently not minded public sex. There was one way he might be able to deflect her, though. He weighed up the risks of using it, then said, “I care when my wife is here and may hear idle
chatter.”
Sofiya drew back. “Your wife?” she repeated. Then she smiled. “Oh dear, you have an old fashioned streak. How cute.” She patted his knee. “I can play that game, too. This afternoon, I will go shopping with your wifey and we’ll get acquainted.”
Neven’s heart sank. He’d gambled and lost. Now he had exposed London, too.
* * * * *
The car wound up into the mountains, following narrow dirt roads. There were no road signs and nothing to show that traffic used the roads. The dirt held no tread marks. The rain would have washed any of them away. The limousine splashed through the mud, jostling them around.
Neven watched out the window. He had studied the maps of the area carefully, more than once, when he had been jumping here to observe Kristijan and his men. He didn’t remember any roads marked this high up the valley. Božidarko was lower in the valley and the valley itself was a dead end, which discouraged further development. The district had blasted out a narrow crevasse through the other end of the valley in 1968 to make way for the train line to Leskovac, which had connected the village up with the twentieth century. It had taken another thirty years for a highway to be built alongside the train track. Traffic through the valley was still primarily local. There was little through-traffic, for the national highway used the next valley over.
When the rusty chain link fence came into view and the ruins of the buildings beyond it, Neven understood. The fenced-off compound had warning signs wired to the fence every twenty feet, including a big one on the gate that barred the way through, warning of unexploded ordinances, unstable buildings and more.
Dragović got out and went to the gate, digging in his pocket. He produced a key, unlocked a modern, shiny padlock and removed an equally silvered chain, then walked the gate open and chocked it with a blasted lump of concrete that had rusty rebar protruding from it.
Then he trudged back, put the car in gear and rolled through.
A muddy, puddle-filled track wound through the wreckage that lay strewn everywhere. Everything metal was rusty, some of it so severely eaten away nothing was left but brown lace. The car bumped over three train tracks. They were not huge bumps, for dirty had built up until the tracks were almost buried.
There were train cars that had no wooden sides left, only the metal box that had supported a floor, also long gone. Many of them had been overturned.
“How clever!” Sofiya said, peering out the window. “Who would think to look here? Is this from the war?”
Neven spotted a twelve foot long steel barrel and turret. “Second world war,” he said, recognizing the shape from movies and documentaries. “An old German ammunition depot,” he lied, hoping he wasn’t too far out. He remembered from history lessons in school that the Germans had used the higher elevations to hide whole divisions and their supplies from the allied forces, during the war. This was clearly one of those depots.
He fell silent. He didn’t need to embroider the lie. If he babbled, it would look strange. Instead, he went back to studying the mournful ruins ahead. The station house had a large roofed-in shelter over the tracks and the building itself was a permanent stone structure. This had been no temporary shelter.
The car bumped its way over closely laid tracks, one after another, nosing across them towards the platform under the roof. There were a set of iron steps at the end of the platform where Dragović stopped the car and switched off the engine.
Remi scrambled out and opened the back door for Sofiya and Neven to get out. He was playing it up, too.
Sofiya didn’t seem to notice. She eased out of the car and looked around curiously. Remi waved towards the platform.
Neven followed both of them as they climbed up the steps. Sofiya had long enough legs that she could keep up with Remi as he strode towards the big opening halfway along the platform. At the opening, he turned and waited for Neven to catch up, while Sofiya stood looking inside.
She was smiling. “Now, that is more like it,” she said, with relish.
Neven looked. He smothered his shock.
There were hundreds of cages stuffed full of people. They stretched for four rows back inside the building and along the length of it.
Neven couldn’t help but look at Remi. Remi stared passively back.
“How close to a full load are you?” Sofiya demanded.
“How big a ship do you have?” Neven replied blandly.
She laughed. “Oh, we can take everything you give us, my pet.” She walked inside, her palms pressed together with delight, looking like a little girl in a candy store. The people in the cages looked up briefly. Their interest was minimal. They were torpid.
“I admit we doubted you would come through. This is simply marvelous,” Sofiya said. “May I look around?”
Neven shrugged. “You wanted to see the stock. Count teeth. Inspect feet. I don’t care.”
Sofiya walked down the length of the station, studying the prisoners she passed. Her guard, the big Russian with a forehead that jutted so far over his eyes he looked like a Neanderthal, followed her silently.
Neven glanced at Remi again. Remi shrugged and walked after them. Neven followed.
He found it hard to look at the prisoners, especially their faces. The children were the worst. Their eyes were full of a misery and sad wisdom that no child should ever have to acquire. None of them spoke. No one pleaded. They were silent. The silence was disturbing. Neven shivered, despite the thick overcoat he wore. It was hard to keep his face passive and disinterested.
Sofiya wound her way through the maze of cages, cooing occasionally. She would stop and inspect anyone who caught her eye.
Neven tired of the game almost immediately. He moved back to the open doorway, to the fresh air, where he could breath. He felt sick.
Remi stayed at Sofiya’s rear. He had more stomach for it than Neven did. He had seen this before. He’d had a chance to get used to it. If one could get used to it.
Neven kept his back to the cages, watching the clouds wreath around the peaks visible at the edge of the tin roof over the rail lines.
Someone shouted at the far end of the station. It wasn’t an alarmed sound, but instructions. They were too far away. The station building made their voices echo, so Neven couldn’t make out what they were saying.
One of the two guards who had been patrolling the cages when they got here ran in a slow jog towards a little office in the far other corner of the building. A normal light shone in there and the door was closed, which meant it was probably heated, too.
He opened the door and shut it behind him. Through the big windows, Neven saw him lean over a desk and palm a long line of red, flat switches.
Sighing sounded, like machinery winding down. Then a silence more absolute than there had been before. Until this moment, Neven had not noticed the subdued hum that filled the air.
The silence didn’t last. Immediately, everyone in the cages got to their feet, grabbed the wire of their cage and rattled it. They shouted, their voices weak. Thousands of voices, rising to a howling that made Neven want to clap his hands over his ears.
The wire had been electrified. That was why they had been huddling so silently in the middle of their cages, careful not to jog each other, or push anyone into the wire.
His horror built. Neven turned away again. He wondered how he could possibly keep up this pretense.
A shouting sounded, coming towards him. He made himself turn back to look. Sofiya was walking towards him, along the front of the cages. She looked pleased with herself.
The guard in the station master’s office gave a shout. “Power on!” he yelled through the door and turned back to the bench of equipment inside.
Instantly, the prisoners let go of the wire and shuffled back together. The power turned on, the same almost-silent hum.
Sofiya gave Neven a wide smile as she reached him. “You have some quality stock here, Kristijan. I am impressed. I didn’t think you could do it.” Her smile grew wider. “You do
n’t mind if I sample the merchandise, do you?”
Behind her, her Russian bodyguard and the second station guard were hauling someone along, gripping an arm each. The boy was struggling wildly and they were having a hard time holding on to him. The Russian bodyguard, who was much taller than either of the other two, hauled the boy off his feet and clubbed the flat of his hand to the back of the boy’s head.
The boy sagged, not quite unconscious.
Sofiya moved behind him and grabbed a hank of his dark hair and hauled it back, so Neven could see the face.
It was Aran.
Neven fought to keep his reaction hidden. It was the hardest fight of his life and he just barely managed it. “A bit young for you, isn’t he?” he asked Sofiya.
“Oh, this is the height of ripeness, I assure you,” she said. “He will last all night, I’m sure.”
“If you can get him to cooperate at all,” Remi murmured.
Sofiya glanced at him. “I have a cocktail that will fix that,” she said dismissively.
A woman screamed. There were words among the hoarse shouting, only the sick buzzing in Neven’s mind was preventing him from hearing them. He looked at the cages. In one of the second row cages, a group of people were holding back a young woman, preventing her from reaching for the wire. She struggled weakly, her arms outstretched pleadingly.
Neven forced himself to focus on what she was calling.
“Stevan! No! Leave him alone! Stevan!”
Aran was still sagging between the guards and clearly could not hear her. His head lolled forward again and the black silky hair, identical to Brody’s, flopped forward over his forehead.
Sofiya jerked her head. “Take him back to the house and put him in my room.” She glanced at Neven. “My usual room, I presume?”
“Whatever room you want,” Neven said. It was difficult to speak calmly.
Sofiya nodded at her guard. “Use the second car,” she said curtly. “He’s filthy. Make sure he’s cleaned up first.”
The guards hauled Aran away. Neven stayed silent. There was nothing he could say, no protest he could make that would not tip off Sofiya. He made himself stay still and promised Aran silently that he would act as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Page 23