Trisha Telep (ed)

by The Mammoth Book of Special Ops Romance (epub)

  “Shall I pour?” Ivanovich asked, before the woman had reached the door. Lucia nodded. Her instincts were telling her that this was the moment, the one glimmer of confusion in their ranks she was likely to get, but she also knew that it was a setup. The woman was an agent, not some hapless secretary thrust into the middle of things – she was moving at a deliberately slow pace, giving Lucia time to make a move. They wanted to test her capabilities.

  She sat quietly while Ivanovich poured tea and handed it over in an eggshell-thin porcelain cup and saucer. Beautiful china. Probably left over from some previous dictator’s regime.

  As they sipped their oh-so-civilized tea, the woman exited the room, the door sealed again with a thickly metallic sound, and Lucia revised her opinion of Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. He’s cool. He’s very cool, to sit here and sip tea and wait for me to try to kill him. She didn’t like that. She’d have preferred someone less . . . competent.

  “You met a man at a bar,” Ivanovich said, taking up the questions again. “How did it happen?”

  She gave him a blinding smile, with all the charm she could muster. “How do such things usually happen? I was sitting alone. He asked if he could buy me a drink. It happens.”

  “What were you drinking?”

  “White wine.”

  “And what was he drinking?”

  “I have no idea. Why? Is it important?”

  Ivanovich shrugged. “Perhaps it isn’t. And this man, how did he give his name?”

  “Paolo Tranconi.” The man sitting across from her stared steadily, not a flicker of emotion on his face that wasn’t preplanned, designed to evoke a response. Lucia allowed herself a smile – a long, slow, promising one. “I’m more interested in talking about you, Gregory Valentin Ivanovich. You seem very . . . interesting.”

  “Do I?” A measured, empty response, although she’d seen the hint of appreciation in his eyes when he’d first taken a look at her. Ivanovich wasn’t the type to be played, even if it did amuse him. “Did you pay Marko Czerny – forgive me, Paolo Tranconi – to procure black market nuclear material on behalf of Iran?”

  She laughed. “I don’t work for Iran.”

  “I know you don’t. That wasn’t my question.”

  “No. I did not pay Marko Czerny – or Paolo Tranconi – to procure black market nuclear material on behalf of Iran. Or, in fact, any nation or group. Is that clear enough?”

  Gregory Ivanovich sipped his drink, then carefully put the cup and saucer aside. She felt the gravity in the room shift, and put her empty teacup aside as well.

  He stood up, walked to her, and – without even a flash of warning in his expression or body language – slapped her so hard her head snapped to one side, and her ears set up a loud, high ringing. Lucia’s first emotion was stunned amazement, but that melted like frost before the fast-following burn of fury.

  She sat up straight and faced him, determined to let him see none of her discomfort. “That the best you’ve got, Gregory?” she asked, in the same pleasant tone as before, though her heart was starting to pound as her body woke up to its very real danger. The body was always the problem in situations such as this. It was hard-wired to take control, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  “No,” he said. “I assure you it is not.”

  And then he hit her, closed fist. It was a starburst of red and white, blanking her out for a few precious seconds; she felt herself tumbling from her chair, and barely had the presence of mind to put out her hands to break the fall. Time slipped away, as she struggled to push aside the fog. She felt herself being picked up, carried from the room, and those few seconds of confusion cost her dearly. By the time she had shaken it off, she was on her face on a stone floor, and someone was tying her hands and ankles. Someone who was not Ivanovich. He stood within her blurry field of vision, watching with those implacable hazel eyes.

  “I’m going to kill you,” she mumbled, through what felt like a broken jaw.

  “No doubt you’ll try. I’m certainly going to give you ample reasons,” he assured her, and looked past her to whoever was tying her hands. “Make sure she’s secure, then take her clothes.”

  She’d known that was coming, but she still felt the primal, bitter shock of it when a knife hissed through the back and arms of her jacket and shirt, sliced her bra straps, and slit her pants from waist down to ankles. Her underwear followed. The reasons were twofold: first, to leave her disoriented and naked, which was always a plus in interrogation; second, even if by some miracle she burst free of her bonds, killed Ivanovich and his men, and escaped, she would have to escape naked, in a Prague winter, unless she was able to strip the bodies of those she took down.

  Which she would do, given a fraction of a chance. Not that they were likely to give her that fraction of a chance. They knew who she was, and they didn’t seem to be in the habit of making mistakes.

  It only takes one, she told herself. You made one. They will make one.

  The floor was freezing, and Lucia felt her body heat leaving her in a river, soaking into the cold stones. She was already shivering. Ivanovich wouldn’t let her freeze to death, but he would certainly let her suffer intensely. It would do half his work for him. Torture was a sweat-intensive business, and those who were good at it knew how to let fear, weariness and pain work in their favour.

  Lucia rose into a kneeling position. It exposed her nudity to Ivanovich’s absolutely level gaze, but that was less important now than preserving body heat. Anger would keep her warm, for a while, but anger would fade, and fear would draw blood into the core of the body, to protect the vital organs.

  She needed to make the most of her slender advantages while she still could.

  “Leave us,” Ivanovich said to his aide, the faceless man who’d so efficiently stripped her. She still hadn’t caught a glimpse of the man’s face, other than a blurred profile; nothing special, like the woman who’d brought the tea. A professional spy, almost certainly. He left without a backwards glance, shutting a thick old steel door behind him. She heard the sound of locks engaging. The hinges of the door were on the outside. Of course.

  Ivanovich’s voice turned gentle. “Lucia, there is no need for this. All you need to do is honestly answer a single, vital question: where is Marko Czerny?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” In fact, of course, she did. Marko Czerny was in an unmarked grave, below a fresh pour of concrete in a warehouse development on the outskirts of Prague. She’d taken care of him herself, stripped the body, and buried him. No point, these days, in the old precautions of destroying the face or taking the hands so that the body wouldn’t be identified. DNA had rendered all that moot. So she’d simply ensured that Marko Czerny had disappeared without a trace, and by the time he might be discovered, it would be a matter for archaeologists to puzzle over.

  “My employers,” Ivanovich said, “would very much like to know the whereabouts of Marko Czerny. He has quite a lot of their money, and they are not people who flinch from using harsh methods to recover what they’ve lost. Therefore, since they are paying me, their methods and priorities must be mine. Are we understood, dorogoi?”

  “How about you?” Lucia asked. “Do you flinch?”

  “Not noticeably. But I would truly hate to see such beauty wasted unnecessarily.” He seemed to mean it, but then she didn’t kid herself that Gregory Ivanovich ever told the whole truth. He was a master liar.

  It took one to know one.

  She was starting to really shiver now, uncontrollable spasms as her body tried to generate more heat to replace what was swiftly bleeding away in the frigid air. She could actually see wisps of escaping heat rising from her skin into the icy stillness.

  Ivanovich suddenly crouched down, putting them on a level, and stared directly into her eyes. That move was a shock, one that almost made her flinch – and she imagined she did that as rarely as Ivanovich himself. They seemed professionally well matched. “Listen to me,” he said, very soft
ly. “I can help you. Let me help you. I am a businessman, not a barbarian. You give me what I need, my clients are content, you go on your way. Your people need never know you told me a word. We can make this a private business, quickly finished. I would prefer it to be so.”

  Of course he would. Money for nothing. “Why is Marko Czerny so important?”

  “I told you, my clients have lost a great deal of capital—”

  Lucia smiled. “I wasn’t born yesterday, Gregory Ivanovich.”

  He considered her for a long moment, then cocked his head slightly as if puzzled. “No, I see that,” he said. “Marko Czerny had, on his person, something that my employers want back. If you killed him and put him somewhere secure to avoid detection, then all you need do is give me the location so I can retrieve what my employers wish to have. If you have it – well, that will be a slightly different conversation, but I’m certain we can come to an arrangement.”

  There hadn’t been anything on Czerny that could fit what Ivanovich was talking about. Nothing in his pockets, only a wallet with a few bills and coins, a false ID . . . not even a cell phone. Granted, she hadn’t performed a cavity search – that had seemed over the top, all things considered – but she was relatively sure that she’d found everything Czerny had been carrying. Which was nothing.

  That was bad news. If whatever Marko was supposed to have been carrying were missing, Ivanovich would have no choice but to assume she had it. And she didn’t have it.

  Which meant that if she told the truth, he’d assume she was lying. If she lied, she’d have nothing to back it up and, once again, that would lead to more questions. Painful ones.

  All in all, not the most wonderful position to be put in, with a man whom she already knew to be a serious professional about his work.

  One who didn’t flinch.

  Lucia decided to try honesty. “I killed him,” she said. “He’s buried under the new warehouse development near the airport. I can show you a grid reference so you don’t waste time looking. But he had nothing on him when I put him down, or when I disposed of him. I checked. Whatever you’re looking for, it isn’t there, I don’t have it and I can’t give it to you.”

  For a moment he didn’t move; she saw his mind race, saw him consider all the possibilities. Discard each one as not feasible. Finally, he said, “I hope, for your sake, that you are lying to me, zolotoi. It will be most unfortunate if you’re not. I think you know that already.”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s why I just told you the truth. I can’t give you what you want because I don’t have it, and I have no idea where it is, whatever it is. So there’s no reason to hurt me, Gregory. I know you’re not a sadist. There’s no benefit in this for you, just brutality. And failure, in the end. Which isn’t optimal for you, is it?”

  “No. But in any case, knowing that I am going to fail only means that it is even more important I make a good showing of trying to reach my goal. You understand this.” He looked away from her, the first sign she’d seen of real emotion, even if it was only the avoidance of it. “Sometimes the choice isn’t mine. Or yours. Lucia, I am sorry. Prepare yourself. We’ll begin soon. I will of course have the unfortunate Marko exhumed, but if what we’re looking for isn’t buried with him, you and I will be getting to know each other far too well.”

  “No offence,” Lucia said, shivering hard now, teeth chattering, “but I really hope I never have to know you at all. I don’t even like what I know about you so far.”

  “No offence taken.” Ivanovich rose to his feet and walked to the door. It opened for him without a visible signal. Electronic? She didn’t know, and it was hard to think about it now, cold and afraid as she was. The fear was mounting, the sense of nightmarish helplessness. There’s nothing with Marko, she thought. He’ll be back. And when he comes . . .

  When he comes, I’ll have to be ready.

  To endure. To survive.

  To not become that anonymous, tragic, star on the wall.

  Only Gregory didn’t come back. She sat alone in the dark, cold and getting colder, until her world narrowed to the torturous business of survival. Lucia was, by nature, a neat, orderly person, and kneeling in a filthy basement room, tied and helpless and naked, was difficult.

  She focused on her breathing, her heartbeat, achieving a kind of meditative calm as she tried to ignore the pain of her cold, cold flesh. After a while the burning sensation faded, replaced by a blessed numbness that she knew, on an intellectual level, wasn’t an improvement. It meant the nerves had given up their fight. Frostbite was setting in. She tried working her numbed fingers, moving to the limited extent her bonds allowed, but she knew it wouldn’t really help. Already, she felt drugged and slowed by the harsh conditions.

  She might have fallen asleep for a while. Time ceased to have any observable meaning.

  With no warning the door spilled open in a shocking blaze of light, and she almost toppled over as adrenaline slammed through her body, temporarily blocking the insidious slide of cold. The light blinded her, and she blinked away shadows and halos. By the time her eyes adjusted, she saw that there was only one man who’d come inside. He locked the door behind him. The harsh overhead light stayed on, and in its glow Lucia could see that her skin had taken on a pale, cold tinge, like something left for dead.

  The man who’d entered wasn’t Gregory. This man was a professional, but of another type altogether. He had a normal sort of face, heavy jawline, deep-set eyes – but there was something about his expression that made Lucia’s breath come quicker. This man was empty. Empty of everything. He was the sort of man employed to do the dirtiest jobs, because there would be little consequence to it; he’d wash the blood from his hands, hum a little tune and sit down to dinner without a qualm.

  This man, unlike Ivanovich, was a true sociopath.

  She tried a smile. It went nowhere. He stared at her as if she were of no more significance to him than the stone floor or the walls.

  “I will ask some questions,” he said. “Some of them will not matter. You will answer them all or I will hurt you. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her teeth were chattering. She tried to stop it, to stop this minor show of weakness, but she knew that ultimately it wasn’t going to matter. She might as well be weak now. Might as well let the tears that burned in her eyes fall. Because this man would not stop, not until he was called off by his superiors.

  “Then we will begin.”

  He hurt her, and he hurt her a lot, but never to the point of compromising her ability to survive. Soft tissue damage, delivered with medical, methodical efficiency. She was not too proud to scream, to cry, to beg him to stop.

  She answered all of his questions. Some of them – most of them – she lied.

  By the end of it, she was lying on her side, gasping for breath, weeping in helpless, silent convulsions. She hated showing weakness, but she also knew that there was no point in being brave. It meant nothing to him, and it was no shame to her.

  He never spoke a word to her. At the end, he threw something over her – a blanket, a cheap microfibre fleece throw that covered her in blessed warmth. Lucia curled up beneath it, shivering, beaten, unable to order her thoughts until the warmth eased some of the pain from her body.

  Then, she began to wonder why. Why send the man in to soften her up? Gregory must have known she was telling him the truth. There was no point to this. Was this his due diligence? Or something else?

  She had the instinct that something was wrong.

  It was difficult, but she forced herself up to her hands and knees awkwardly, and began a methodical shuffle around the room, inching in a square, searching for anything at all that might be of any use.

  In the far corner, behind a broken shelf, she found a jagged piece of glass – not large, and not as sharp as she’d have preferred, but better than she’d expected to find.

  Lucia rolled herself back in the blanket and began to carefully, carefully saw at the bonds that held he
r hands together. It was very difficult. Her fingers were numb and awkward, and she lost count of how many times she dropped the tiny piece of glass and had to conduct a weary search for it. Pieces of it flaked away. She was terrified that it would completely disintegrate before it could serve its purpose.

  She was starting to feel the ropes giving way when the door opened again, the lights blazed on, and Gregory Valentin Ivanovich came inside. Alone.

  Lucia froze. She looked up at him, and saw actual emotion flicker across his face: surprise. He looked at her for a long moment, started to speak, stopped and shook his head. “Someone brought you a blanket,” he said. “Ah. That’s good.”

  He didn’t know.

  “We found the unfortunate Marko exactly where you said we would,” he continued. “And as you predicted, there was nothing of interest on his body. Which brings us back to the same problem, Lushenka – I have no other suspects, no other clues. And my employers will not accept failure . . .” His voice trailed off as the implications of the blanket, and whatever was showing in her expression, began to become clear to him.

  Ivanovich suddenly crouched down, reached out and pulled the blanket away from her, revealing the cuts and bruises, the damage done.

  He looked at her for a long moment, and she saw muscles tightening in his face, in his shoulders. No mistaking what that was. Surprise, and fury. He was not quite good enough to mask it. Or he didn’t care to, at this moment.

  Gregory put the blanket back around her with surprising gentleness. “I did not authorize this,” he said. “You understand.”

  “Doesn’t matter to me whether you did or not,” she said. Her voice sounded rusty, damaged, exhausted. “It doesn’t make it all go away.”

  “I know.” He reached out and eased dark, sweaty hair back from her face, and the warm, gentle touch of his fingers was almost worse than the torture before. She couldn’t afford to trust him, not for an instant. “I assure you, I will find out who took matters into their own hands in my absence.”