by Alex Shaw
Sixteen-year-old Louis Brissot lived two streets over from her in a flat above the family-run butcher’s shop. No one liked him. ‘Hello, Pie Face!’
‘Move out of my way, Louis.’
‘No. I won’t. What are you going to do about it?’
‘I’m going to ask you nicely.’
‘I’ve seen you running in the mornings, wobbling along. Following your dad. But you’re not with him today.’
‘Wow, you have excellent eyesight.’
‘Better than yours.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I do.’
‘Move out of my way.’
‘No. You’re not better than me! You and your rich parents living in that big house. Who do you think you are?’
Sophie frowned. She didn’t know what to do and she didn’t know why he was angry. She certainly didn’t view herself as being rich.
‘Give me your money, then you can pass,’ Louis demanded.
She crossed her arms. ‘Who carries money when they go jogging, you imbecile?’
‘You called me an imbecile? I’m going to tell my mum.’
‘Why bother? She already knows you’re an imbecile.’
Louis’ nostrils flared. ‘I’m going to punch you!’
‘Is that what boys do – punch girls?’
‘If the girls don’t do what they are told to!’ Louis took a step forward, his right hand clenched in a meaty fist. Sophie took a step backwards and then turned. ‘Go on run away – Fat Pie Face!’
Sophie stopped. She faced him. She glared at him. She held her head high and jutted her chin at him. ‘Move out of my way.’
Louis snorted; he took a large step forward and swung his right fist. Sophie didn’t flinch, and the fist connected with her jaw. She stumbled sideways and thrust out her arm against the wall for support. It was the first time she had been punched in the face and it was a strange sensation. Her jaw itself did not hurt but she could feel the tendons that joined the bone to the rest of her skull. They ached, and then she realised she could taste blood, but it was the shock that was the worst part.
‘Next time I ask you for money you’d better have it!’ Louis said as he stood before her, triumphantly.
Sophie straightened herself up, worked her jaw and then said, ‘Get out of my way, you imbecile.’
‘What? Do you want another?’ Emboldened with power and anger, Louis swung his fist again. But this time Sophie ducked and he hit the wall. He let out a yell as the rough stone skinned his knuckles and bruised his hand. Without thinking, Sophie kicked him as hard as she could between the legs. Her Nike trainers were soft, but her rage made the impact brutal. Louis fell to his knees and vomited. Sophie stepped over him and carried on with her run, hardly noticing that she was all but sprinting up the steepest part of the hill with ease.
That evening, over a huge, homemade meat pie, her mother told her father that the only way to stop Louis’ mother from calling the police and creating a scandal was to agree to buy a month’s worth of meat from the family’s butcher’s shop. Sophie had sat, hardly touching her food. Very worried, but she needn’t have been because her father placed his hand gently on her bruised cheek and said that it was high time he trained her how to fight properly. No daughter of his was ever going to allow a boy to punch her again.
Chapter 6
Present Day
Minsk National Airport, Belarus
Minsk National Airport was the name given to what was actually Belarus’ international airport. It was from here that the elite of the former Soviet Republic escaped the stiflingly hot summers, and the bone-chilling winters, to holiday at their villas in Cyprus or alpine chalets in Klosters. The late Seventies Soviet terminal building looked old but was clean and sturdy; Racine much preferred its functional honesty to the glass greenhouses of Western Europe, which masqueraded as shopping malls. Avoiding the heightened security measures of the Moscow airports had been tedious yet necessary. Landing in the Austrian capital Vienna with a Swiss passport, she had quickly cleared customs. Once she had the run of the terminal, Racine collected her clothes from a locker, swapped passports – leaving the Swiss one – and continued her journey as Russian businesswoman, Victoria Petrovska.
As a business-class passenger, she was amongst the first off the Austrian Airlines flight and the third passenger to arrive at the immigration counter. She stood behind the thickly painted yellow line that separated returning travellers from the border guards who each sat at their computer terminals in individual glass-sided boxes. The nearest official, a woman in a dark green serge uniform, beckoned Racine forward and she presented her passport. The woman made no eye contact as she took the document and scanned it on her terminal. She had auburn hair, cut in a stylish bob. Her make-up, however, had been applied in a heavy layer, which would have drawn the wrong type of attention in Paris, and the top button of her uniform tunic was pushed open by her cleavage. Racine imagined many businessmen enjoyed returning home.
She looked up, matched Racine’s face to her passport, stamped it and handed it back – all without uttering a single word. Racine strode through the customs hall. The empty luggage carousel turned noisily. She carried an oversized leather satchel and was dressed in an expensively tailored, charcoal grey, boot-cut trouser suit and wore a waist-length winter coat, popular in the Moscow fashion world. Her own make-up too was more elaborate than she would have liked, but she was currently Russian not French. A trio of border guards eyed her unashamedly as she passed. She was not stopped for any other type of inspection and less than a minute later stepped through double sliding doors and into the arrivals hall. Behind a metal barrier, no more than ten feet ahead, eager crowds pushed, attempting to catch a glimpse of their loved ones. Amongst the throng, large men in suits held up name cards. Racine scanned the crowd for any sign that she was under surveillance. With the exception of some men ogling her as usual, she detected nothing. Following the barrier, she pushed through the crowd, which was reluctant to let her pass.
Immediately out of the fray she was accosted by freelance taxi drivers, each seeking a juicy fare to the city centre. They were dressed in the former Soviet uniform of flat cap, heavy fur-collared leather jacket, and jeans. They looked vaguely Germanic. Racine’s contact was not meeting her at the airport for fear of being spotted. He was to collect her at a restaurant on the side of the Minsk highway, halfway to the capital. Racine continued to walk through the melee of drivers hawking their services until one got directly in her path. His leather jacket was open to reveal a large stomach straining against a blue woollen sweater.
‘You want a taxi? I am the best.’
‘How much to downtown?’ Racine replied, in curt, Moscow-accented Russian.
‘One hundred dollars,’ the rotund driver offered; the US dollar was still preferred by most in the former Soviet republics over local currency.
‘To go forty-two kilometres?’ Racine raised her perfectly painted eyebrows, haughtily. ‘I’ll give you fifty.’
‘Take a bus.’ The driver folded his arms across his wide chest and started to turn his back, his key negotiation strategy.
Racine had no time for amateur dramatics and pointed to another driver. ‘Seventy to take me to the city.’
‘Done,’ the new driver agreed, smiling.
‘Hang on!’ The first driver was outraged. ‘She’s my fare!’
‘Your trouble, Sergey, is that you are too greedy!’ The second driver tapped his belly playfully.
‘Get off!’ Sergey brushed his arm away and looked at Racine with a pained expression on his face. ‘Sixty.’
‘Agreed.’
Racine followed the portly driver out of the terminal building, down a ramp, and into the car park. Sergey withdrew his keys from his pocket and a set of lights flashed on a white Lada 110 saloon. ‘Hand luggage only?’
‘Yes.’
‘You want to put it in the boot?’
‘No, I shall hold it. I have bottles in there.’
>
‘An important cargo,’ Sergey conceded. ‘Which hotel am I taking you to?’
‘The Hotel Europe.’
‘Hmm … classy. How many nights are you staying?’
‘Just one.’
‘A quick “in and out”?’ He leered. ‘That is always fun.’
‘Yes.’ Racine wanted to punch him in the head, take the wheel herself, and drive off. But she resisted the urge and climbed into the back, and the taxi pulled away.
Sergey stopped at the manual barrier to pay the attendant, handing him several crumpled notes before they left the airport slip road and joined the M1 highway heading west. His phone chirped, alerting him to an incoming text. The car swerved slightly as he checked it and replied. ‘Sorry, it is my brother, Danik. You are from Moscow?’
‘Yes.’ Racine had no desire to talk.
‘It is an amazing city, but I have only been once. I went to see Granddad Lenin. I waved at him in the mausoleum, but he ignored me!’ He laughed at his own joke. Racine did not. ‘So what is it you do? What type of business?’
‘Human resources.’
‘Ah, yes.’ The driver clearly didn’t understand her reply.
The traffic was brisk in both directions and the driver didn’t speak for several minutes as he split his concentration between fiddling with his cell phone and driving. Racine took in the countryside. Flat fields mottled with clumps of dark trees flashed past on both sides. Twenty more minutes, she estimated, would see them in Minsk but her rendezvous point was only a matter of five up the road. Soon she would ask the driver to slow and explain her change of destination.
But then the car did slow. Sergey swore. A militia officer, part of the Belarusian traffic police, stood in the slow lane with a white flashing baton pointing at them; behind him, a patrol car sat facing the highway. It was the signal to stop and Racine knew it was usually the start of a well-rehearsed shakedown. The salary of a normal militia officer was below the cost of living, yet those in the militia who could paid their way into the traffic police to profit from the extraction of motoring bribes. Sergey muttered to himself some more and the car stopped at the side of the road. Outwardly, Racine looked like a confused passenger, but on the inside she started to consider all possible scenarios. Was it a normal ‘stop’, or had her cover been blown? Racine relaxed her body and prepared for action.
‘Zdravstvuyte,’ Sergey greeted the officer in Russian.
‘Your documents, please.’
‘Here.’ Sergey passed his licence through his open window.
The militia officer glanced at the licence. ‘You were recorded exceeding the speed limit; because of this, there will be a fine.’
Sergey didn’t argue, even though the officer held no speed camera. ‘How much?’
‘Four hundred rubles.’
Sergey shook his head in a pantomime manner. ‘Officer, please, that is a large sum. I am sure one hundred would cover my oversight, and pay for a good breakfast?’
‘Three hundred.’
Racine looked right. A second militia officer now clambered out of his patrol car. Like her driver Sergey, he had a stomach that made his jacket strain. He approached the taxi with an assured, rolling gait, his right palm resting on his sidearm.
‘Two hundred,’ Sergey counter-offered.
The second officer reached the front of the car and stared at Racine through the windscreen before he joined his colleague.
‘OK, I can accept two,’ the first officer replied.
‘One moment.’ Sergey turned in his seat. ‘I am sorry, and this is very embarrassing for me, but if I had not been driving you, I would not have been speeding. Can you give me the money for the fare now, so I can pay this officer?’
It wasn’t an entirely unreasonable request, but something about Sergey’s face looked different. ‘OK.’ She reached into her bag and withdrew a small purse and removed two notes.
Sergey leant backwards and grabbed her hand. ‘Now give me the rest, like a nice lady.’
Racine handed him the purse. She couldn’t jeopardise the mission. If losing a few hundred rubles meant it would continue then so be it. ‘Please just pay the fine and take me to where I need to go.’
‘No,’ Sergey scoffed. ‘That is not how this works.’
‘I really haven’t got the time for this,’ Racine said.
‘You haven’t got the time? Do you think you are in control here?’
The second officer, the fat one, tapped on the window with his knuckles. ‘Get out of the car, please.’
Fight or flight, the choice was hers, and she never ran away. Racine scooted swiftly across the back seat and exited the car on the driver’s side, bag in hand. The bulk of the taxi was now between her and the fat officer.
Sergey climbed out. He stared at her. ‘Give me your bag as well.’
‘You don’t want to do this,’ Racine stated.
‘Oh, but I do … and I will.’
‘Raise your hands!’ the fat officer ordered.
Sergey placed his hand on Racine’s bag and heaved; her grip didn’t break. ‘Give me the bag!’
‘I said, raise your hands!’ The officer’s voice was angry and his fingers started to undo the clip securing his pistol. ‘I’m placing you under arrest!’
This wasn’t normal. Something odd was happening and Racine was not going to hang around to find out what. As the officer removed his pistol from its holster, Racine took a step forward and delivered a straight-edge strike to Sergey’s throat. He let go of her bag and grabbed at his neck. Racine now swung her bag and let it go. It sailed over the top of the car and hit the fat militia officer square in the face. At the same time he squeezed the trigger. A round arrowed into the air, hitting no one, but alerting all to the situation. Racine bounded around to the front of the car, switching her focus to the officer who had been extracting the speeding fine. She hit him with a rapid side kick, the sole of her ankle boot digging deep into his unprotected stomach. As the gaping officer folded, she delivered a left-handed palm strike to the side of his head. Without pausing, she took three quick steps to the fat officer, who was on his knees, and hit him square in the face with a powerful straight kick. He fell forward against the taxi and slid to the ground.
Sergey looked on, holding his throat. His eyes met Racine’s and he shakily raised his hands. Racine grabbed the fat officer’s service pistol – a Russian-made Makarov – as he lay on his face, wheezing and fighting for air. He gave no resistance as Racine took his cuffs and secured his hands.
‘They are militia!’ Sergey croaked. ‘You will pay for what you have done.’
Racine pointed the Makarov at Sergey. ‘Come over this side.’
The taxi driver trudged around the car and joined her. It was not beyond possibility that her cover had been blown and these two, however incompetent, had been ordered to bring her in. In that case why hadn’t she simply been detained at the airport?
‘Sergey,’ the militia officer at Racine’s feet uttered weakly, ‘who is this madwoman?’
‘You know him?’ Racine’s eyes narrowed and she stabbed Sergey in the chest with the Makarov. ‘How?’
‘He is my brother, Danik.’
It suddenly all became clear to Racine as her anger rose. ‘So, you pair of cretins wanted to rob me? Was that it? Or was there more to this scam of yours?’
Sergey stammered, ‘I … I … please … d … don’t hurt me.’
On the highway, a large truck passed them, the wide-eyed driver rubbernecking at the scene. He brought the vehicle to a shuddering halt and raised a mobile phone to his ear. Racine swore under her breath and pointed the Makarov at the driver, who instantly got the message and pulled away. It wouldn’t be long before someone else stopped or reported what they’d witnessed. She had to go … now. ‘Lie down, next to your brother.’
Sergey hesitantly got on the ground. Racine pushed his face into the dirt with her boot before she checked the officer at the front of the car. He was out cold, but
breathing normally. On the other side of the highway, a Lada Niva covered with militia decals screeched to a stop, creating a dust cloud. And then its sirens sounded. More sirens now as another militia vehicle, this one on her side of the road, swam into view.
‘Merde!’ This wasn’t the time or the place for a firefight. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
‘This is the militia. Put down your weapon!’ Across the highway, a man with a bullhorn stood behind the Niva.
Racine scanned to her left. The second militia vehicle was almost upon her. If they had automatic weapons she was finished. Without warning, someone fired. A round pinged against the taxi; she scrambled to the wheel arch – the safest place. Another round; this one hitting the tyre and rendering it useless. They could shoot. Her situation was getting more complicated by the second, and she could feel her mission slipping away.
‘This is your last warning!’ the bullhorn boomed again.
Racine looked at Danik’s patrol car. Surrender was not an option. Getting to her feet, she snapped off two quick rounds at the Niva before grabbing her bag and sprinting. Reaching the Lada, she mouthed a blasphemous prayer of thanks as she found the keys were in the ignition. She floored the accelerator pedal and screeched onto the highway. Checking the rear-view mirror, she saw a militia vehicle halt by the taxi and an officer spill out before it continued in pursuit. Racine put on the siren and lights and increased her speed; she had to reach the rendezvous and be away before the militia could catch her. She weaved in and out of traffic, her tactical driving skills being put to the test.
The car started to shudder as the needle moved past the one-hundred-kilometre mark. It wasn’t a sports car, but neither was the Lada chasing her. In her rear-view mirror the pursuit car grew in size. She pushed her own car harder; the vibrations increased. Ahead, a large fuel tanker pulled in front to overtake a truck in the slow lane. There was nowhere to go. She had to slow. Racine sounded the horn but to no avail. The tanker did not move from her lane. Her rear-view mirror was now filled with the pursuit car. She tensed and hunkered down her shoulders to minimise the chance of whiplash … and then quickly stamped on the brake pedal and let the chasing car ram her.