by Ryan Schow
“Name?”
“Jasha Stasevich,” Codrin said, still chewing loudly. “He’s a professor. Teaches gender studies or something like that.”
“Is that something I should know?” Atlas asked.
“No,” Codrin said, swallowing. “His last class ends in an hour and he likes to walk the University Embankment, where he meets his friend in the park. It’s a couple of blocks away, I gather. The park must be obvious because he talks about how peaceful it is inside. This friend he meets, in an email, said he likes to walk to the park after work because it calms him.”
“You’re giving me the biggest boner ever,” he said, sarcastic.
“He also said he knows that if things ever get too bad at school, he can simply jump into the Neva River and drown himself.”
Atlas wanted to laugh, but he didn’t. “Can you send me a picture of this man?” he asked. There was a beeping sound on his phone. He looked at it, then said, “Was that you?”
The kid took what must have been a handful of kettle-cooked chips and started chomping slowly, his mouth clearly open.
“That’s the picture I sent you,” he said. “You’re welcome.”
And with that, the line went dead.
“Saint Petersburg State University,” Atlas said to the driver. The ambitious Russian changed directions with a soft grumble, rerouting them to the highway.
“We’re actually staying at the Hotel Astoria, next to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral,” Cira told the driver. Then to Atlas, she said, “Why don’t you talk to Jasha and we’ll get checked into the hotel? You can catch a cab there if you’d like. Or maybe you could just walk if it’s not that far, which I don’t think it is.”
Ignoring her, because he knew it bothered her, Atlas said to the driver, “How old is Saint Petersburg?”
“You want me to play tour guide with you?” he asked, clearly sour over their earlier exchange. “You can help me get my English perfected?”
“Is that alright?” he asked.
“I know the city well,” the driver said without a smile. “Saint Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in seventeen hundred and three. Something interesting you must know. The city change its name two times in history. In nineteen hundred and fourteen, Saint Petersburg change to Petrograd for ten years. Then it change name again to Leningrad. This last longer, to nineteen hundred and ninety-one, but then name change again. Back to Saint Petersburg. We make full circle turn, yes? How was that for history? How was my English?”
“Why did they change it to Petrograd?” he asked.
“The name before sounded too German.”
“So why Leningrad?”
It took him a moment to understand the question, but then something clicked and he understood. “It was in honor of Vladimir Lenin, who died in nineteen hundred and twenty-four. After fall of Soviet Union, name changed back, but outside regions still called Leningrad Oblast.”
“Your English is very good,” Atlas lied.
The man gave a stiff nod, a sign of appreciation and understanding in the Russian culture, or so Atlas thought.
The landscape was flat, with endless fields of wilted yellow grass. Far off in the distance was the city sprawl. Springing from random bursts of overgrown foliage were low-slung buildings, along with the occasional smokestack. He might have even seen a tree or two. But none of this was enough to squelch the discomfort building up within him. He hated the view, the desolate, utilitarian look of the land.
“This is pretty fucking ugly,” Atlas remarked.
“I know,” the driver said. “But the highway coming up is beautiful. It cost nearly seven billion US to construct.”
“Well, I certainly hope so.”
“Don’t be rude,” Cira muttered under her breath.
The skyline was bland at best, wholly uninteresting, and it bothered him that there was no clearly defined metropolis. As a Californian, he was used to the city’s need to organize their many businesses along the highways. He hadn’t given infrastructure a second thought in his life, but now, looking at the outskirts of the city, he felt consumed by it. He didn’t understand exactly why he disliked the barren landscape so much, but in that moment, he wanted to tell the driver to turn around and take them back to the airport.
“I’m sorry, I just really don’t like this place already,” he heard himself tell Cira.
“You will enjoy Saint Petersburg,” the driver chimed in. “Everyone hates drive into city. When we get to Western High Speed Diameter, you will like much better.”
“How long will the drive take?” Cira asked.
“It is about twenty-two kilometers, or thirty minutes by the watch.”
“I’m sure it’ll feel like thirty years by the watch,” Atlas muttered again. To the driver, he said, “No offense intended.”
Atlas felt that tightening in his chest loosen the instant they merged onto the Western High Speed Diameter heading to Saint Petersburg. As promised, the drive into the big city took them just over thirty minutes.
“You’re feeling better, yes?” the driver asked. Atlas nodded in the affirmative. “I can tell, my friend. That is how I am. Intuitive.”
Smiling, Atlas said, “So it seems. And you were right about the highway.”
Before long, they passed Rumyantsev Square.
“This is university gardens,” the driver said. “It is one square block, but do not think because it is small it is without history. This was park designed for parades for Cadet Corps in late seventeen hundreds.”
“This might be the park Jasha comes to,” Atlas whispered to Cira.
The driver continued. “In eighteen hundred and sixties, garden was planted. Also obelisk was brought here, fountain too, and iron gates. It has not changed much since my birth, but if it is beautiful, as it is, there is no need to change, am I being right?”
“Pull over here,” Cira said to the driver. To Atlas, she said, “When you’re done, just cross one of the bridges on the river and walk to the hotel. It’s next to Saint Isaac’s Cathedral. You can see it if you stand by the river. Call when you get there, okay?”
“You’re going to let me out here? Alone?”
“You’re operations.”
“Okay,” he said, getting out. “I’m trusting Jasha’s classes are letting out?”
She looked at her phone. “In the next half an hour, so you have time to relax, adjust to your surroundings.”
“Okay,” he said, dragging out the word.
He thanked the driver, then walked to the park as the van drove off. The moment he strolled through the ornate iron gate and into the charming square itself, all the anxiety he’d had since he’d first met Cira began to dissipate.
Taking a seat on one of the benches at the center of the square, he found himself under the shadow of the large obelisk facing a large fountain at the square’s center.
As he waited for the man in the photo—the photo he looked at a dozen times—Atlas tried to comprehend this strange, surreal twist of fate. Just days ago, his life was over. He was a murderer serving three life sentences with no possibility of parole. He’d never see the light of day outside the confines of NorCal. But then Leopold and Cira had come into his life, and now he was sitting unsupervised in a strange city, waiting to meet a diaper diver, which is what his next-door cellie, Trigger, called pedophiles. That and chomos, or child molesters.
He waited for what felt like too long. He was beginning to wonder if maybe he should have waited on the street. That was when two men entered the park, one looking familiar. He checked the photo, confirmed the identity of one of them. His target. Discreetly, he watched them as they conversed like old friends. The two of them took a seat on a nearby bench, their conversation animated. The man sitting next to his target was an older government official by the look of him. He was also an obstacle in need of removal.
Atlas should have been patient, but he no longer had the patience of his youth. When Alabama had gone missing, his patience had gone mis
sing with her. He reminded himself that he was on foreign soil, that he should be careful, assess all potential threats before engaging the target. He did a quick sweep of the enclosed park, his gaze landing back on Jasha. Instead of waiting this out, he stood and wandered over to the two men. In Belarusian, he said, “Would either of you gentlemen happen to have a pen I could borrow?”
The two men smiled, and Jasha Stasevich’s friend pulled out a pen. Atlas took it, then looked at both of them with an uncomfortable smile.
“If you don’t get up and leave me with Jasha,” Atlas said to Jasha’s friend, “I’m going to kill both of you right now.”
The two men looked at each other, then began to laugh.
“Get up now!” he roared. Both men started to get up. “Not you, Jasha. You sit back down.”
“Can I have my pen back?” his friend asked sheepishly.
“The only way you get this pen back is if I bury it in your eye,” Atlas growled.
An older couple who had been enjoying the fountain from the other side of the park got up and made their way out quickly. Jasha’s friend wasted no time doing the same.
“Who are you?” Jasha asked, terrified, shaking.
“The man who will either save your life or kill you, depending on how you answer these next few questions.”
He flashed the picture of Kaylee Barnes and said, “You know her, yes?”
Jasha blushed but then shook his head no. Atlas stabbed him in the thigh with the pen. By the time he opened his mouth to scream, Atlas pulled out the pen and clamped a hand over the professor’s mouth. The muffled scream rattled the skin on Atlas’s palm. When Jasha managed to suck in a big, ragged breath—almost like he was going to scream again—Atlas nodded his head slowly, his mean eyes narrowed, deadly serious. Jasha saw the threat, stifled his pained cries.
“Let’s look at the bright side,” Atlas said, no longer cupping the man’s mouth. “You still have your life.”
Tears leaked out of Jasha’s eyes, and he squirmed against the pain in his leg. He couldn’t seem to pull his gaze off the bloody pen in Atlas’s hand, but he was smart enough not to scream. Atlas sat down, scooted close to the man, then draped an arm across the back of the bench. To the layman, they might have looked like old pals, had Jasha’s face not betrayed his pain.
“We can try this again, if you’d like,” Atlas said.
“I would like that very much,” the man managed to say. “Can I see the picture once more, please?”
Atlas showed him Kaylee’s picture. Through tear-streaked eyes and a bit of a sniffle, he nodded and said, “Yes, I’ve seen her before.”
“When?”
“A week or two ago?”
“In what capacity did you see her?” Atlas asked.
“I paid to have sex with her.”
“Do you know how old she is?”
“Eighteen?”
Atlas stabbed him again, almost in the exact same spot. With his mouth closed, and his eyes squeezed shut, he wailed somewhere in the back of his throat. It was an odd, uncomfortable noise. Right then it occurred to him that either the couple or Jasha’s friend might be calling the police.
“She was fifteen,” Jasha finally said. “Fifteen.”
“I need to know how you managed to procure her services,” Atlas said. “Give me a name and an address.”
The professor gave him a website instead.
Atlas memorized the name, then said, “I am going to track these people down. I want you to know that I found you easily. I know where you live, where you work, what time you wake up to take a dump in the mornings. I also know you’re not happy with your career anymore, and that you often think of jumping in the river and ending it all.”
At this, Jasha became alert.
“I tell you that because if I find out you told me even one lie, I will come back with a very big, very sharp knife and I’ll cut you to pieces. After that, I’ll feed you to the river myself.”
“It might have been a different website,” the man said, shamefaced and scared. He finally gave Atlas the right website address, which he had memorized.
In the distance, Atlas heard sirens wailing.
With no time to spare, he said, “Take off your coat. NOW!”
Jasha shrugged out of his coat, handed it to Atlas. The second he took it, Atlas’s stabbing hand shot out, the pen sticking the professor in the meat of the upper chest, right next to his opposite shoulder. When Atlas ripped the pen out, Jasha curled forward and away from him, snarling in pain. Atlas then hit him in the face so hard, his body crumpled forward and started to shake. Jasha was already crying again.
“If there’s one thing you do not do in this life, it’s have sex with children. Do you hear me, you disgusting weasel?”
“I know,” Jasha said, blubbering and sobbing.
Atlas punched him again, then wiped the pen of prints and dropped it on the ground.
“If I hear you’re with one more young girl or boy, I will find you and torture you, and then I’ll kill you—slowly, painfully, just like I promised.”
The man was practically hyperventilating when Atlas left him. The second he hit the sidewalk outside the park, he popped the stolen coat’s collar and pulled his hat even lower over his face. Instead of walking up to the hotel, he doubled back to Jasha’s university, mingled with a few of the students, then left the jacket in a bathroom stall. When he emerged into the view of others, it was with his shirt untucked, his sleeves rolled and his hat turned backwards. He even changed his walk, the way he moved his arms. He had no idea how the Saint Petersburg police worked, but he didn’t want to make himself easy to find. Which meant he had to do anything he could to keep the discriminating eyes of law enforcement off him and his trail.
It was time to go to the hotel. What he encountered along the way, however, was a smattering of police vehicles gathered around the park. Atlas breezed past the scene, using the cover of a gathering crowd to move. Not once did he glance at the park, or to the scene of the assault. If the cops there were anything like the cops in America, they’d have someone photograph the crowd. Granted, the crime didn’t warrant such measures, but he wasn’t about to test that theory either. At the hotel, he met Cira in the lobby.
“All the commotion across the river, the sirens,” she said, “was that you?”
“If there’s one thing I won’t tolerate in life, it’s a pedophile.”
“You killed him?”
He shook his head. “I might have stabbed him with his pen a few times, but he’ll live, and he won’t talk. Too much to lose.”
“So much for a peaceful evening,” she grumbled.
“I need a computer, and then I need to call the mouth breather.”
“Codrin?”
“The one and only.”
“How would you feel about getting food first?”
He grinned, the idea sounding marvelous. “I’d feel fantastic about that.”
They headed up to Cira’s suite, ordered room service, then sat down at the table in the common room. She’d already set her laptop up on the table.
“Where are the meat sacks?” he asked.
“Our security?”
“Sure.”
“Next door,” she said.
She logged in to her secure server, then turned the screen his way. He typed in the website address Jasha had given him with two, slow-pecking fingers. The two of them waited in silence as the site loaded up.
“Do you have Codrin’s secure email address?” he asked.
“Yeah, but I want to see this site first.”
They expected to see something like an escort service. What they saw instead appeared to be a national food delivery service. The pictures were so uninviting, he nearly clicked right out of the site.
“Boxed food?” she asked.
“Must be some kind of code,” he reasoned. “You know, like the pedo codes back in the US.”
“Do you want to place an order and find out?”
“No, I don’t. Not yet, anyway.” He spun the laptop around her way and said, “Codrin’s email.”
She pulled up the last secure email he’d sent, then turned the computer back around. Atlas typed in the name of the website Jasha gave him, then the words owner, business address, personal addresses of the principals. He hit SEND. When he was sure the email wouldn’t bounce back, he spun the laptop back around.
“What did that mean?” she asked of the website.
“It translates into fresh boxed lunches.”
“Like takeout?”
“Something like that. I need a gun and a blade. Not something cheap either. And I’m going to need at least a hundred rounds. Hollow-points if you can.”
“I’m already on the gun,” Cira said, picking up her phone. She hit speed dial five, waited for the voice on the other line—which was male—and said, “I’m going to need a blade, too. Fixed, tactical, along with a belt sheath.” The man on the other end of the line spoke for a moment. Cira then said, “Thanks.”
“How long?” Atlas asked.
“A few hours at most. Now what?”
“I need a shower,” he said. “And maybe a foot rub if you can spare it.”
“I can’t,” she said, unamused.
“But it would feel so good,” he teased, feeling some of the tension between them bleeding away.
He didn’t know why he pestered her the way he did, for he hadn’t been lighthearted or charming since before Alabama was taken. All that changed rather quickly. That feeling of letting go, of just relaxing and being a halfway-decent human being, dissipated at the thought of Alabama, and of being in a different country looking for someone else’s kid.
“I’ll start your shower,” she replied, missing the entire range of emotions he was suffering, “but don’t ask me to join you.”
“Wouldn’t think of it,” he said, the playfulness gone. “I’m not into blonds anyway. Too uptight.”
“Who says I’m a real blond?”
Chapter Eighteen
ATLAS HARGROVE
Atlas stretched out on the bed, let out a deep sigh, then closed his eyes, and relaxed for the first time in years. When exactly he’d gotten accustomed to prison beds, he couldn’t say for sure. The aching in his spine, the headaches he’d wake up with on account of a pancaked pillow after another night of bad sleep…this was all par for the course, something he’d become so accustomed to, he no longer thought about it. Until now. Lying on this perfect bed in Cira’s suite was going to ruin him for years to come. He’d all but fallen asleep when Cira came out of the shower. She had one towel wrapped around her body and another wrapped around her head.