Into the Lion's Den

by Tionne Rogers

  I was terrified of her now. She had said it such a cold way, as if I were a bug ready to be crushed.

  “The cellar is soundproofed. We already tried it with your man, Yuri.” Stephanov told me as I looked at him in horror. “You see, a bullet in your head won't do at all. We have to set an example, just in case Constantin finds a replacement for you. He has to pay for all the pain he put Olga over the past year.”

  I wriggled against my captor and fortunately caught Sergei unaware and could knock him down, exactly as Yuri had taught me, going for his weapon, a Glock 9. Before the other two would jump on me, I surrounded his neck with my arm, pressing as strong as I could because I knew I only had a chance, and put the weapon against his forehead.

  “One step more and he's dead,” I threatened. Idiot.

  The man on my right fired and killed Sergei with a clean shot in the head, making the base explode, splashing his brains all over me. I was petrified. They had just sacrificed one of their own just like that. The dry sound of the body hitting the wooden floor and my heartbeat hammering my ears, are things that I won't forget. I took an involuntary step backwards but I couldn't pry my eyes from the dead form lying in a pool of blood.

  “Well, more for us, don't you think?” Stephanov chortled.

  I tried to run but one of the monsters jumped on me and knocked me down, hitting my head several times against the floor to stop my rebellious attempts.

  “Stop!” She shouted and for a second I thought that she was having second thoughts and would let me go. “You're going to ruin the parquetry with the blood. I plan to have tea with my friends here. Take him to the cellar with his friend while you clean this.”

  The brute dragged me, throwing me the stairs down and I think that was when I sprained my ankle, I don't know. All the previous hits on my head were making me feel dizzy and stunned. My body hit with full force against the metal door and I realised that the thickness was not to protect the wines environment but to keep the cries muffled. That door was exactly as one of those recording studios. I tried to stand up but I got a vicious kick on my ribs and I felt my lunch coming to my mouth and I dry heaved.

  “Don't you dare to throw up on me, piece of shit. I'm going to fuck your brains out before we kill you and hear me well, if you ruin my shoes, your death will be very slow and painful.”

  He opened the door and again took me by the collar as if I would weight nothing and threw me against a limp form on the floor. I recognised it as Yuri, horribly beaten and almost dead because he was almost not breathing.

  There was blood everywhere. I turned him around and I saw that they had burned his face with a cigarette. I don't know but I started to weep like a little girl for him.

  “Guntram, your mobile, do you have it?” He croaked to my surprise and yes I had the second one, the mini or cockroach as I used to call it because of its size. I nodded. “Just switch it on. It has a distress signal.” He didn't close his eyes, they just went glossy and I knew he wasn't here any longer. I did what he told me but hid the thing inside his pocket because I thought that they were going to throw our bodies at the same place. They are only three of them now and two bodies to get out in the middle of Kensington. They would have to wait for the night or leave us here.

  I don't know why I had the flashback of Chano, my lawyer and legal tutor telling me that a torture session is your most political moment in your whole life. There you understand the concept of power because you have to convince your interrogator that you have nothing that could interest him. He should know, he barely escaped with his life in 1977, as he was in the Peronist Guerilla. He was tortured for several weeks till a friend of his father, a colonel let him go because he was a middle rank cadre, never involved in military actions. He also told me that it's nothing personal, they want to make it personal so you plead and fall into the abyss when they do nothing for you.

  Don't talk to them; try to ignore them; there's a point when the pain nullifies itself and either they kill you or they stop and let you live to start again later.

  Easy to say, not so easy to achieve. I don't know for how long they left me with Yuri, I suppose so I would be more terrified but his body was a source of comfort for me because I knew that he was in peace now and I remembered all the laughter we had together when he was taking me to buy a muffin at a stall in Victoria Station or when he was helping me to smuggle a Star Wars comic from Forbidden Planet—I think he also read them—or when he was sneaking my jacket out of the house to the laundry so Mikhail wouldn't know that I've been to the McDonalds'

  or another greasy place. His attempts at learning our “dialect” were truly funny and his impersonation of the Argentinean accent was very accurate. I caressed the side of his face and muttered “good-bye, my friend.” I closed my eyes because I've never felt so tired, defeated in my life.

  “You're disgusting! Sleeping next to a body!” Stephanov shouted me awake, giving me another kick on the back. I rolled and tried to stand from my knelt position but he hit me again in the face with a lot of force. I nearly fainted.

  “No! Not in the face my love. I want a beautiful body so Constantin knows what he has lost. Morozov wants him devastated with grief, unable to think. Lintorff will finish him off.” I heard the voice of the bitch. “He's an artist, focus on that, my love.”

  “As you wish Olga, now let us work. This is for men only, dear.” He chuckled and I thought poor idiot, she will turn you into meatballs once she's finished with me. That woman is a predator of the worst kind. Sharks kill because they're conditioned by nature to do so; she kills for pleasure and power.

  I heard her heels stomping over the concrete floor, going away and I braced myself for what was coming with the three monsters. As I have predicted they moved the body to one dark corner, doing their best not to touch it.

  Funny, you kill but you're afraid of a body.

  They were very classical with me as they couldn't touch my face. They kicked me on the stomach and ribs many, many times. At some point I stopped counting the blows and huddled, trying to protect my head, but I didn't plead and that drove the two men mad. I was in maddening pain, my body burning in flames and every breath was a slow torture, but I didn't feel like crying.

  “So you're a though guy?” Stephanov shook me because I think I was fainting and I vomited or spat a lot of blood, ruining his precious shoes. He hit me on the stomach with all his force and I bent over myself with the pain, howling. One of the others ripped my jacket and shirt off and started to burn my skin with a cigarette. It was a horrible pain as you could feel the red point going through the layers of skin and the foul sweet stench of the burned meat. It's nothing like you have never experienced in your life. It's just unique. But I didn't plead, just like Chano told me to do.

  They shouted something in Russian at each other and the two men looked very nervous about something.

  “We will try what the boss finds so good.”

  I felt them tearing my clothes, but I was half conscious due to the beating and couldn't resist them as all my remaining strength was on my brain, trying to find a way to nullify the pain. One of them—don't know which one because I couldn't see well on my right side clouded somehow—threw me against a table making me face the wooden surface and the door that led to the wine cellar. I felt one hand securing me by the neck, burying his fingers and suffocating me. He penetrated me and I yelled when he did it feeling his satisfaction pour all over me. He fucked me very hard, and it was like being torn in two. He almost left me deaf with his groan when he finished inside me. He shouted something in Russian and all of them laughed. The second and the third came next.

  But I didn't plead or make them stop. Stephanov took me twice, the second not even finishing it. As they were too exhausted to continue with the game and I assume I was bleeding in a very disgusting way, they decided to focus on the “he's an artist” part.

  First they removed the nails, one by one from my left hand and later used a hammer to break the fingers.r />
  My throat was raw from my crying because there are no words to describe how you feel when your torturer toys with you, falsely attacking you, just to make you cry and finally gives you the blow or the pull. It's a game, a political game about showing you that he's in charge and you're nothing.

  Wrong, you're something; you have what he desires, like Chano told me.

  I only wanted to die to escape the pain, but they knew exactly when to stop to let me recover just a bit. I knew there that I was going to die but they will take all the time in the world to do it and I just wanted to avoid the pain.

  “Water,” I pleaded finally, knowing that they wouldn't give it to me, but having an idea of what could pass through their minds.

  “Do you want a drink? Suck me and you'll get some. Bite me and you're dead.” The dark haired shouted grabbing me by the hair. That was my hope. He put his filthy thing inside my mouth and started to ram it, keeping my head straight by fisting my hair.

  I bit him hard, not to the point of tearing the member, but to the point of feeling the blood flood into my mouth. He yelled and fell to the floor from the pain. His friend jumped on me and stabbed me three times in the stomach, before Stephanov could stop him.

  “Stop! We will settle the score with him later! Take Ivan out,” he yelled and the other man did as he was ordered.

  'Only one left,' I thought

  “If Repin is half of what you told me, there would be no hole in this Earth deep enough as to hide you,”

  I said, still spitting the blood on the floor. Whose one's? I don't know.

  “Shut up, little fucker!”

  “Do you realise that you're next? She only cares about money.”

  He jumped on me and put one of those Rambo knives out and yelled. “Shut up!”

  “The second time you could do nothing. Getting old? I know now why you got this job.” I truly wanted to end everything.

  He knocked me down once more, getting all dirty with the blood freely flowing from me. Funny but I wasn't hurting anymore and there were so many bright lights dancing around. I believe he shouted something like

  “how do you want it? Your neck or your right hand amputated? Do you want to live?” and I think I said: “kill me.”

  I'm not sure, I heard a big detonation and I passed away, relieved that it was going to be over soon.

  I woke up two weeks later, in a private hospital just to start the nightmare of surviving or living.

  The security man couldn't believe his eyes: An emergency signal from one of the top members in the organization. He looked up the code and location and it was from Mr. Repin's boyfriend and from the house in London. “Shit!” he cursed loudly, getting his own mobile phone to warn his superior. “If the boy was playing with it, Oblomov will kill him.”

  Malchenko couldn't believe his bad luck. He had tried with Massaiev but the man was in Bucharest, working per his cousin's orders and he should speak with Yuri Rimsky, who was taking care of the boy probably painting or working at the market, trying to sell a sorry porcelain dog to an old American tourist lady. Yuri Rimsky didn't answer his phone nor anyone in the house seem to be there. The boy's phone was off. “Better be on the safe side, if something happens to Guntram, Constantin will kill me very slowly,' he decided before dialling Gregory Kalashov's number in London. 'The question is, do I call Constantin or not?' Better not. I'll get Oblomov; he's with him in New York.'

  “No, leave Constantin out of this till you speak again with Kalashov Probably it's nothing and if there's something going on, Kalashov should be able to deal with it. The Order wouldn't be so crazy as to attack us so bluntly.” Oblomov said after he was briefed.

  “Their man in Tbilisi is dead along with his family. Lintorff is very corporative in his thinking. He blames us and he will go against us.”

  “He wouldn't dare.”

  “Why not? He's furious with us. He lost a lot of money to save his positions in Central Europe. Morozov nearly provoked a default in Poland and Romania.”

  “Mr. Malchenko? One of my men went there, but he found nothing out of the ordinary.” Kalashov said respectfully, still uncertain of the outcome of his investigation. He was perfectly aware that he was walking on thin ice as the original order of “speak with the bodyguard or the boy,” had not been fulfilled. “Did he speak with the boy or his bodyguard?”

  “No, they're gone to Bath for the day. The little idiot forgot his mobile phone. The lady who spoke with him, told him that the ringing had driven her crazy the whole afternoon.”

  “Lady? As cleaning lady?”

  “No, very elegant woman, with a real emeralds necklace, brunette and tall. Nothing cheap at all. ”

  “Shit!” Boris swore very loud when he realised that the only woman with such description was Olga Fedorovna. “Get a team and raid the house. Now!”

  “Raid the house?” Kalashov repeated incredulous. “Mr. Repin's house?”

  “Take a minimum of ten men to enter there; full equipment. I'm flying to London now. Whatever happens, no police at all. It's internal.”

  “Should we not wait for you?”

  “NO! Move your ass before Repin kills us all for being such idiots!”

  “But if…”

  “I take full responsibility. Move now, and take whoever is there alive! No deaths at all! Mr. Repin will want to have a word with whoever is in his house!” he shouted before slamming the phone against his desk and dashing for the door.

  Kalashov men were nervous. Raiding the big boss own house was a very bad idea, even if it was one of his most trusted henchman's order; Malchenko in charge of the Smolensk territory. Being family didn't make you immune to his well-known wrath and sadism. The seven men, including Kalashov looked at each other when Malysev finished to nullify the security system as indicated by Malchenko. “Where is the fucking security team?” One of them mumbled.

  “Sounds very bad. We go in and we shoot to kill.” Kalashov whispered as they entered through the dining room door to the garden.

  Very fast they secured the first floor and found two men in a bathroom. One of them fired first but he was killed in no time, and the other surrendered himself. “Wait, we're with Olga Fedorovna Repin!”

  “Shit!” One of the men cursed.

  “Where's the boy? Guntram.”

  “In the cellar, with Stephanov. It wasn't my idea, she forced me!”

  “What did you do?”

  “Stephanov did it. Killed the bodyguard and tortured the boy. She ordered it!”

  “Malysev get that woman! The rest, follow me.” Kalashov ordered

  The gory sight of the boy on the floor, lying in a pool of blood, nearly dead was a very bad omen for all of them. While the men took Stephanov away, just hurt in the shoulder, Kalashov frantically thought what to do. A simple doctor wouldn't do as the boy was stabbed and obviously in shock, bleeding profusely. “We take him to St.

  Catherine's in East London. They won't ask questions.”

  “He won't make it. We need an ambulance.” The man trying to stop the bleeding protested.

  “No police at all. This is more serious than we thought. Besides, he's almost dead. We're only covering our asses when Repin starts to kill people. Shit! He liked that boy a lot!”

  Kalashov paced the sterile hospital waiting room. The doctors had taken the boy to surgery six hours ago and none of them had come to tell a thing. The poor lad had been tortured and raped for over five hours and they had been especially vicious as Olga Fedorovna was determined to make him suffer. 'But the vixen was clever enough as to run away after she saw my man. I have no idea of where she could be.' “Kalashov!” Malchenko greeted the tired man. “How is he?”

  “I don't know Mr. Malchenko. In surgery. They're trying to close his wounds, I suppose. I've seen no doctor so far.”

  “Do we trust this place?”

  “Belongs to us. Always takes care of my boys. They're good doctors. It's the best I can do.”

  “I know. Thank you. M
r. Repin will be here tomorrow at noon.”

  “We missed the wife. I'm sorry.”

  “I'm after her. The others?”

  “Secure in one of the houses. Lost one and there were two more bodies inside the house. My people are cleaning it.”

  “The service, where were they?”

  “It seems she sent them away for the day. The butler had the day free.”

  “Mr. Kalashov?” A good looking woman dressed with green fatigues asked him. She was carrying a small cap on her hand. He nodded and she continued. “I'm Dr. Emily Harris, the surgeon. I treated Mr. de Lisle.”

  “Is he…?” Malchenko asked already waiting for the worst.

  “No, no. He's in the intensive care unit. It was a long and complex surgery, sir as his stab wounds were very deep. We had to remove the spleen and part of the liver as they were damaged beyond repair. It was a miracle the knife didn't touch other organs.”

  “Will he recover?”

  “It's hard to say at this point. My main concern is his heart as he suffered one heart attack during the surgery. We weren't aware that he suffered from a previous heart condition. There was no time to make any kind of pre surgery tests.”

  “Guntram has nothing of the sort!”

  “The cardiologist has just assured me that he suffers from heart failure due to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. Perhaps it went unnoticed because the symptoms are very easy to overlook. It's one of the leading causes in young athlete’s sudden death. We managed to stabilize him, but he's in a pharmacological coma because of his brain injuries. He was severely beaten and has a skull fracture. Fortunately there's no brain swelling so far and we hope the coma will prevent further damages and reduce the stress from the pain. We estimate that we would need a minimum of five to seven days before we try to remove the sedation.”

  “Can we see him?”

  “No, I'm afraid not. Visiting hours start tomorrow from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. He's in a critical condition but stable, and that already gives us hope, gentlemen. If you'd excuse me.”