Death of a Tyrant

by Christopher Nicole

  Elaine licked her lips, as full memory returned. Gregory! And she had introduced him into Priscilla’s house. With such terrible consequences! “Gregory!” she muttered.

  “Come again?”

  “Priscilla,” she said. “My mother-in-law. What’s happened to her?”

  “I would say she’s been snatched, like I said. We haven’t had a demand, yet, but it’s early days. Mrs Cromb was a pretty wealthy woman, right?”

  “Well…I suppose so. But…not so wealthy to be worth several lives.”

  “Mrs Bolugayevski, there are people who will kill for a dime. Now let me ask you a question that’s been bothering me. These people bust into your mother-in-law’s house. They shoot her butler, they shoot her husband, they shoot her son. But they don’t shoot you. You reckon they were gentlemen in disguise?”

  His sarcasm rankled. “They didn’t shoot me, Lieutenant, because they weren’t ordinary kidnappers.”

  “You’d better explain that.”

  “They were Russian agents. Their leader was a man my husband and I had known in Russia during the War. That’s why he didn’t shoot me. We had been comrades in arms. We had fought shoulder to shoulder against the Nazis. He just couldn’t do it.”

  “But he could shoot your husband.”

  Elaine drove her hands into her hair, and winced. “God, I don’t know. That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

  “Russian agents,” Di Salvo said, sceptically.

  “Didn’t you know we’re a family of Russian emigres? My husband’s family, anyway.”

  “Lady, you got any idea how many families of Russian emigres there are living in this country today? I never heard of any of them being attacked by Russian agents. Russian agents!” He got up. “We’ll talk again later. Maybe by then we’ll have had a demand.”

  “There isn’t going to be a demand,” Elaine shouted, and winced again. “Listen, Lieutenant.” Di Salvo had reached the door, but he checked, and turned. “Your idea is that the Princess has been kidnapped,” Elaine said. “Right? You say she was kidnapped for ransom. Right? Now you tell me who’s going to pay this ransom? She’s the one with the money. What are they going to do, make her write them a cheque?” Di Salvo frowned. “There is only one person in the world, other than Priscilla herself,” Elaine went on, “who has access to her money. Her husband, Joseph. So they shoot him and leave him for dead? Does that make any logical sense to you?”

  Di Salva scratched his head. Then his expression brightened. “Her brother is President of Cromb Shipping Lines. Now he is loaded. And she is his only sister.”

  “Jim Cromb also has a wife and three children,” Elaine snapped. “Wouldn’t it have made more sense to snatch one of them, if it’s his money they’re after?”

  “We’ll talk later,” Di Salvo decided again, clearly needing to think about the situation. “After we’ve had the ransom note.”

  “God!” Elaine shouted, nearly mad with desperation.

  The door opened, and sister looked in to make sure she was all right. But with sister there was another man, who also had detective written all over him. He began whispering to Di Salvo, whose eyebrows went up and down like yoyos. “You okay, Mrs Bolugayevski?” sister asked.

  “I’m fine. How is my husband doing?”

  “He’s going to be all right. The operation was successful.”

  “Thank God! Now, if I could just make this moron listen to me…”

  Di Salvo had returned to stand beside the bed. “What do you know?” he asked. “The guys have found a body. So what’s new? This guy, they reckon, was shot twice and then thrown from a moving vehicle. They’ve also found the first two getaway automobiles used by the kidnappers, and this body is in the general direction those cars were heading. Could be nothing, could be support for your idea of what happened, Mrs Bolugayevski. So any time you reckon you can come down and have a look at this stiff, see if you recognise him, it might be a help.”

  *

  “How do you feel?” the woman asked. Priscilla had actually been awake for some time. But she had lain still, trying to come to terms with her situation. And her feelings. She felt so sick she thought she might be about to vomit. She also had a frightful headache, and she wasn’t sure where her arms and legs were. As for where she was…there was movement and noise all around her. She was either on an aircraft or on a ship. She rather thought it was a ship, because the sound of the engines was remote. But then, she might have gone a little deaf.

  When she had woken up she had been in a box. At first she had thought it was a coffin, had for the first time in her eventful life actually known terror. She had faced death on more than one occasion, but the thought of being buried alive… Then she had realised she was in a truck, and that she was being transported, somewhere. The air was relatively clean inside the box, so there had to be some ventilation, but when she attempted to move she couldn’t; like her mouth, her arms and legs were taped together, at ankle and knee and thigh — under her dress — and wrist and elbow and shoulder, and then her entire body had been taped, again at ankle and thigh, round her waist and breasts and even forehead, to various projections inside the trunk itself. It was impossible for her to move anything save her fingers, toes and eyelashes.

  And her head had been opening and shutting with a succession of blows, which almost made the other discomforts, the awareness that she must have been manhandled in every possible way, seem irrelevant. The muzzy feeling might have been caused by that, but as there was also some soreness in her right arm she reckoned she had been injected with some drug which had kept her unconscious for a good while, while she could still taste the chloroform that had first been used to subdue her. The claustrophobic feeling of being so enclosed and so helpless had all but overwhelmed her.

  But she was alive, and whoever had snatched her from her home was interested in keeping her alive, that was obvious. Priscilla had been in sufficient traumatic situations in her life to be able to cope with this one. She had to be patient, and wait, and watch, and silently suffer…until she could act. She had spent her time trying to remember. And experienced a growing sense of horror. A man called Gregory Asimov!

  Asimov had been brought into her house by Alexei and Elaine. He had pretended that he was looking for work…then he had suddenly attacked them. She had been warned to expect that might happen, and she and Joseph had been armed, but the suddenness and ferocity of the attack had taken them by surprise, and Joseph… Joseph had been shot! He might be dead! And Alexei! She didn’t know what had happened to Alexei; Asimov had hit her when she had tried to defend Joseph. Asimov!

  The true horror of the situation rose up in a cloud around her mind. Joseph! The only man she had ever truly loved. The man she had travelled half round the world to rescue and restore to health.

  Desperately she had tugged against the tapes before collapsing in exhaustion. Meanwhile, movement. She had been unloaded from the vehicle in which she had been travelling, and then loaded again, into whichever vehicle she now was. She had heard various muted sounds, men talking, speaking English, then others, speaking Russian. They were very efficiently removing her from the world. For their own purposes. But Asimov had been Russian. She had been kidnapped by the secret police. By Stalin!

  That was the thought that had made her feel physically sick. She had been Stalin’s prisoner once before, and had survived. Because he had been unable to have sex with her! She had actually supposed she was going to be executed after his humiliation. Instead he had expelled her from Russia. But now…why should he want her back again, now? He could hardly have regained his sexual potency! Did anyone know what really went on inside the mind of a mad dictator?

  Just as few people believed the truth of what went on behind the closed doors of his secret prisons. Joseph had known. Now she was going to find out. But at last the lid had been raised. Blessed light, and more air. And the tape had been taken from her mouth, leaving her feeling that she had been slapped, hard. Yet it
was such a relief. Not that she cared for the face looking at her. It was as hard as granite, and although it was smiling, it was a cold smile. “I asked you a question, Princess.”

  “I feel like shit,” Priscilla muttered. She had every intention of meeting them on their own ground until they tore the tongue from her mouth.

  The woman snapped her fingers, and two other women loomed over the trunk. They pulled the tapes away from her arms and legs, throwing up her dress to tear the tape away from her thighs, ripping her stockings as they did so. As she was utterly in their power, that did not seem important besides the other things they might soon be tearing. “Can you sit up?” a man asked.

  Slowly and painfully Priscilla pushed and pulled herself into a sitting position. She scraped hair from her face and looked around her. She was definitely in the cabin of a ship. Which had not yet put to sea. Therefore all things were possible. “Please do not get any stupid ideas about screaming,” the man advised. “This cabin is sound-proofed. It is a special cabin, reserved for the use of me and my people.”

  Priscilla tried to lick her lips and found that she could not. The man smiled at her, almost sympathetically. “You must be very dry. Valya, water, and then brandy.”

  A glass of water was held to her lips. Priscilla drank greedily. Then there was a glass of brandy. She shook her head, but the glass remained in front of her, and the man leaned forward. “Drink it,” he said. “Or we will make you. You must learn to obey us.”

  Priscilla drank the brandy; she didn’t want to encourage them to touch her more than they had to. As if anything she did would stop them touching her, when and where they chose! “Good,” the man said. “I like women who behave themselves. My name is Kagan, Princess.” He waited, as if supposing she might have heard of him. But she hadn’t.

  “Do you think you can get away with this?” she asked in a low voice. “You will never be allowed to leave the country.”

  “But we are leaving now,” Kagan said. “Listen.” Priscilla listened to the wail of a siren, even as the noise beneath her feet began to grow in intensity. “Long before the police get around to thinking about which ships or planes might have left the country with you on board,” Kagan went on, “we shall be beyond the twelve-mile limit.”

  “They’ll still come after you,” Priscilla said.

  “You think so? I do not think they will. For one thing, this is not a Russian ship. It happens to belong to a country, and a shipping line, which is sympathetic to us, certainly, but the United States coastguard would have to be very sure you were on board before they would dare risk stopping us at sea in international waters. And additionally, you see, you are not important enough to anyone in America even to create an international incident.”

  Priscilla glared at him. “If I am not important enough, why have I been kidnapped?”

  “Because you are important to us. The Americans do not know who you really are. To them you are merely an effete aristocrat who persists in dabbling in matters that should no longer concern her. Do you know…” he grinned. “I imagine there will be members of the State Department who will be happy to see the back of you, considering the chaos you have caused over the past forty years. Get out of that box.”

  Priscilla glanced right and left at the women standing to either side of her. She presumed they were waiting to assist her if she hesitated. She grasped the sides of the trunk and pushed herself up, stepped out. Her legs were trembling in any event — her shoes had come off or been taken off — and as she attempted to stand the ship moved away from the dock to the accompaniment of whistles and changes in pitch from the propellers. Priscilla gave a little gasp as she fell, but she was caught by Kagan, who sat her on the bunk beside him. “You will get used to the motion,” he assured her.

  Priscilla panted. “Why am I important to you?” she asked. “What am I supposed to have done?”

  “Now that I cannot say. You are important to my superiors. That is all that matters.”

  He signalled his assistants, and another glass of brandy was produced. This Priscilla drank without hesitation. Perhaps it would end the nightmare. “Will you tell me what has happened to my husband?”

  “Your husband is dead.” Priscilla gasped, and nearly choked. “He was shot by Gregory Asimov. You remember Asimov?”

  Priscilla stared at him, trying to get her thoughts together. Joseph was dead, dead, dead. Her Joseph. Murdered by that thug…who was in the employ of this thug. But there was so much else. “My son?”

  “Prince Bolugayevski is also dead,” Kagan said.

  Her entire family! Gone.

  “Asimov shot him too,” Kagan said. “But for some reason he did not kill your son’s wife. That was very remiss of him. Who would have supposed that Asimov might have a soft spot for a woman, merely because they had once fought side-by-side? No doubt they slept side-by-side as well. But that is no excuse for dereliction of duty. Valya, I think the Princess could do with some more brandy.”

  What am I to do? Priscilla wondered. I should be dead myself. What have I got to live for if Joseph and Alexei are both dead? But of course, she was going to die anyway. When they were finished with her. She drank the third goblet of brandy. Perhaps she could stay in a stupefied alcoholic state until the gun muzzle was placed on the nape of her neck. But that had to be a dream.

  “Obviously this news is upsetting to you,” Kagan suggested. He seemed to have a perverted sense of humour. “But if it is any consolation to you, Asimov is now also dead. He was executed by his commanding officer. For dereliction of duty.”

  “And human life is that cheap, to you,” Priscilla muttered.

  Kagan shrugged. “Life is cheap, everywhere. There is too much of it.” He grinned at her. “Except where it needs to be preserved, for a special purpose. As are you. Now listen to me, Princess. This voyage will take us ten days, to Leningrad. For that time you will remain in this cabin. I’m afraid I have no change of clothing for you, but through there is a bathroom, and you may wash your clothes as you wish. Or you may take them off. I shall not mind. I might even enjoy that. What I really wish you to understand is this. As I have said, you will remain in this cabin. I am sorry about the lack of opportunity for exercise, but it is only for ten days. I am sure there will be ample opportunities for exercise when we reach Russia, and if you really do feel the lack of it, you can practice running on the spot, or something like that. However, I should tell you that two of my girls will be in here with you for every minute of the voyage, and therefore you must behave yourself, and not attempt to resist us or make yourself a nuisance. If you behave yourself, you will be well fed and given as much to drink as you wish. If you make a nuisance of yourself, you will be punished. Do you understand me?”

  Priscilla continued to gaze at him. I am the Dowager Princess of Bolugayen, she thought. Time was I had a hundred servants waiting on my every wish. Those days were gone, she knew, but she was still a millionairess. She spent her time moving from her various luxury homes to various luxury hotels. She had a maid to lay out her clothes and brush her golden hair. And she had several wardrobes full of clothes scattered around the world. Could she really be reduced to some kind of slave, possessing but a single dress, threatened with physical violence? She supposed that she had done some things during her life that might not be approved by everyone, but she had surely never committed such a crime as to deserve this. Unless being the Princess of Bolugayen was so considered a crime by these people. But that was the one certain fact that she must never let herself forget. No matter what happened, these people had once been her serfs. She must die making them remember that.

  The ship was trembling now, as it gathered speed, and rolling slightly in the swell. The three glasses of brandy added to the movement which caused Priscilla to stagger, and she might have fallen had the woman Valya not caught her arm. Kagan patted the space beside him. “Come and sit down, your highness, and let us get to know one another better.”

  Before Priscilla could
attempt to resist, Valya had pushed her onto the bunk beside her commander. Kagan put an arm round her shoulders. “You see,” he said. “I am the one who is going to be here most of the time. This will be your berth, and I will sleep over there.” He pointed to the other bunk. “I should think that in ten days of such intimacy, you and I will be very old friends by the time we reach Leningrad.” He rested his other hand on her thigh, began sliding the dress up from her knee. “I think you should take this off now, or it might get crushed.” Priscilla threw her resolutions out of the window, and spat in his face.

  *

  “So there, you see,” Tatiana said. “There is really nothing to see. At least from up here.” She had parked the hired car at the top of a rise, looking down into the valley beneath. Andrew was still in a state of continuing amazement. Travelling with an Intourist courier had quite altered his concept of what Russia might be like. Tatiana, it appeared, had but to whisper in someone’s ear, and whatever she wanted had immediately been forthcoming.

  They had travelled south from Moscow to Poltava in a first-class compartment, and in Poltava there had been this hired car waiting for them. Andrew had not been aware that it was possible to hire a car in Russia. Or that Tatiana could drive a car as well as she did everything else.

  And in addition to those magical properties, she remained the most fervent, uninhibited, exhausting lover he had ever known. If all Russian women were like Tatiana in bed, he thought he had discovered the answer to the conundrum that puzzled so many Western observers: how the Russians had so meekly and for so long put up with tyrannical overlords, whether Tsarist or Communist — all they ever really wanted to do was get home to bed! His persistent euphoria at being in her company had aroused considerable feelings of guilt. He had not, he felt, paid sufficient attention to the country through which he was passing, and which was the vital background to his book.

  In fact, the country had been in the main as boring as the people, and while he had made copious notes of the various pieces of information Tatiana had offered him, when she was talking of Russia she was as boring as anyone. Even Poltava had been boring, and, being a student of Russian history, he had been anticipating seeing the site of the famous battle, probably the most important battlefield in all Russia, not excluding Stalingrad. Here on the banks of the Vorksla, in 1707, Charles XII of Sweden, probably the greatest fighting general the world had ever known, and Peter the Great, the Tsar who had created modern Russia, had come face to face.