by Greg Rucka
"About the fact that I want us to leave Odessa."
"That's always been the plan."
"Yes, I know that's the fucking plan. But she wants to stay in Eastern Europe and I don't."
"Where do you want to go?"
"Someplace I speak the fucking language. Ireland. All I am right now is a warm body to draw fire if things go to hell. At least there I've got some connection with the people, I know something about the country, and I speak the goddamn common tongue."
"I agree," I said.
"It's stupid to stay here and you what?"
"No, you're right, it makes sense. Let me talk to her about it."
The phone exchanged hands again. This time, Alena spoke in Georgian.
"I knew you would agree with her."
"Because she's right," I said, using English.
"It's too long a trip for Miata."
"Then take it slow. And do me a favor?"
"What?"
"Switch back to English. Speaking in Georgian just proves her right."
"Fuck her," Alena said, then switched to English, petulantly asking, "Better?"
"Much."
There was a pause, then she said, "We've been in Odessa too long already."
"I was thinking the same thing."
"We'll move tomorrow. Check the box, I'll leave the new contact there."
"I will."
There was another pause, and I knew what she wanted to say, and why she wasn't saying it.
"I know," I told her. The address I'd given Celik was for a truck depot near the Trabzon harbor, on the east side of town, close to the water. Like Batumi, Trabzon was another port city, built upon the trade that came over the Black Sea, trade that the residents traced back to Ancient Greece and beyond. I'd driven by the location the previous day, then returned to it this morning, parking and taking a walk around on foot. The depot was a warehouse farm, and it was busy with forklifts and lorries, but near the southwestern side was a section that clearly suffered from disuse. I pried the door open at the side of one of the warehouses, and within discovered a space that looked like it would give me the peace and quiet to do what I needed.
I wasn't going to leave Trabzon without Tiasa's location. One way or another, Arzu was going to give it to me. From eleven until one in the morning, I staked out the location from my rental car, twice leaving it to scope the area on foot. Just as in Batumi, the depot rolled twenty-four/seven, creating plenty of ambient noise. For the entirety of my surveillance, no one even came close to the warehouse I'd chosen.
Just past one I took my gear and headed inside. There were fractures in the ceiling, missing pieces of roof, and through the gaps small packets of city light managed to reach inside. It wasn't a lot of illumination, but it was enough to work by. I unfolded the metal chair I'd purchased, set it smack in the center of the space. Then I opened the carry-all I'd bought, checking its contents once more. It was exactly the same as it had been the last time I'd looked. I took out my laptop, set up everything I was going to use on it, then closed the top and put it to the side until it would be needed. Next I took out the knife I'd purchased, moving it to a pocket, and then finally removed the first of the two envelopes with Celik's payment. Finished, I took a slow walk around the interior once more, giving my eyes time to adjust, waiting for the arrival of my guest.
They were prompt. By my clock it was two precisely when the same door I'd used was pushed roughly open and two uniformed police officers entered, dragging a hooded and bound third man with them. Celik followed after them, saw me, saw the chair, and spoke in Turkish to the officers. Then he crossed to me, and we watched together as his officers maneuvered their struggling cargo into the seat. Metal rang on metal as they handcuffed him to the chair.
"Complimentary," Celik said.
One of the officers, finished, came over and handed him the key to the cuffs. Celik held it out to me with one hand, his other open and waiting. We exchanged items, the envelope for the key. I tucked the key into a pocket while Celik counted the money, checking the stack of euros in the weak light, taking his time to be certain he wasn't being ripped off. When he was satisfied, he replaced the bills, then stowed the envelope inside his jacket.
"We will be back at four."
"You said three hours," I told him.
Celik shrugged. "I meant two."
Then he and his two men left the warehouse.
I waited for a minute after they were gone, not moving, just listening. In the chair, Arzu had stopped struggling, but his head beneath the hood was swiveling around, searching desperately for some sort of noise. I watched him, and after another thirty seconds or so, he began pulling at the cuffs, making the chair beneath him hop and scrape on the concrete. The third time he pulled at his restraints, he twisted and went off balance, toppling over and slamming his left shoulder into the floor. The sound he made was muffled by his hood and gag.
I moved around behind him, not saying anything, not making a noise, then took hold of his shoulders and righted him in the chair. His reaction to the contact was instant, more muffled words, pleas. I couldn't understand what he was saying, realized he was using Turkish.
Still standing behind him, I pulled the hood from his head and cast it aside. He strained to find me, but I'd positioned myself well, and he couldn't get an angle. I opened the blade on the pocketknife and used it to cut the gag from behind. He spat it out immediately, began speaking quickly again in Turkish.
I closed the knife and replaced it, then brought out the BlackBerry and put the picture of Tiasa Lagidze up on its little screen. The illumination from the device was like using a small, weak-celled flashlight, but any light in that place was enough, and Arzu's Turkish came faster.
With my free hand, I took a handful of his hair and yanked his head back so he could look up at me. Then I put the BlackBerry in his face, so he could see the screen.
"This girl," I said in Russian. "Vladek Karataev sent her to you just over three weeks ago. You sold her. You're going to tell me to who and where."
He blinked rapidly, looking past the BlackBerry's screen up at me. The recognition was not happy.
"Go fuck yourself," Arzu said.
"You want to rethink that answer." I turned the BlackBerry off, put it away again as I moved around in front of him. "I mean, you really want to rethink that answer."
He spat on me. "What's she to you, David? Huh? Why you so fucking desperate for that skinny ass?"
"Tell me where she is."
"You wanted that virgin cunt for yourself, is that what you wanted? You wanted to bite her little tits? You wanted to be her first fuck, to have her cherry? You're too fucking late. We opened her like a fucking garage, we fucking split her in-"
I punched him, shattering his nose, sending the chair over backward. His head smacked into the concrete hard enough that he went abruptly, dangerously silent. For a second, I thought I'd hit him too hard in my anger, that I'd knocked him out, or worse.
Then he croaked out a laugh.
"Yeah, you wanted her little cunt. Something small enough to make you feel big."
I took a breath, trying to calm myself, then moved to him and righted the chair once more. Blood from his broken nose flowed in a black stream over his lips, reminding me of Vasylyna.
"It's one girl," I told him. "I'm not after your network, I'm not after your business. I'm after just one girl. Tell me where she is."
He spat again at me, this time ejecting blood. This time I was expecting it, and he missed.
"Fuck yourself."
"You're going to tell me."
"Fuck yourself. You might kill me, David. But I give up my contact, he will kill me. And if not him, the ones he works with, the ones who work with me." He shook his head, spat out more blood, this time directing it at the floor.
"This is the second time you've been in lockup in three, four weeks," I said. "You think the people up the line don't already think you've turned rat? You think the people who supply y
ou, the people who work for you, don't already think you're compromised? You think they still believe they can trust you?"
"I'm getting out. They'll buy me out."
"You're going to tell me," I said.
"No, David. I'm not."
"Have it your way," I said, and went back to where the carryall waited on the floor. From inside I removed a hammer, a hacksaw, a pair of pliers, and a bottle of lighter fluid. I showed Arzu each item as I brought it out, then set them, in a line, on the ground so he could see them.
"You're going to fucking torture me?" There was bravado in his voice, so obvious that I knew he was scared. "You're going to fucking cut me? Beat me?"
"Oh, no," I said, opening the laptop. "These aren't for you, Arzu. They're for them."
I turned the computer, showed him the pictures I'd put up on the screen. The glow on the monitor illuminated his face, showed me the recognition and then the horror.
"You never should have told me you were married," I said.
"You cocksucker," he whispered.
"Your wife is very pretty. And the kids are good-looking, too. Your youngest, how old is he? I'm thinking he can't be much older than ten."
Arzu pulled his stare from the monitor to me, his expression warring between hate and fear.
"You fucker, you cocksucking motherfucker, you stay away from my family!"
"Well," I said. "That's really up to you now, isn't it, Arzu? You can tell me where I can find the girl, who you sold her to, or you can keep it to yourself. But you do that, you better pray to God that you can buy your way out of jail quick. Because if I don't get what I want by the time Celik comes back to collect you, you better believe the first stop I make after leaving here is your home."
I snapped the lid of the laptop down, letting the gesture serve as emphasis, then set it aside and met his eyes. He stared back at me, brimming with hate, believing every one of my words.
That I would never-could never-bring myself to follow through on my threat didn't matter. Arzu could imagine the horrors I threatened to visit upon his family, because Arzu could imagine himself doing the exact same things. What was beyond the pale to me was simply the way you did business to him. He believed me, because he still thought that we were alike.
"Theunis Mesick," Arzu muttered.
"Where do I find him?"
"Amsterdam." Arzu shook his head, angry. "I don't know where."
"You have a way to contact him," I said. It wasn't a question. "Tell me the procedure."
"You motherfucker."
"I can head over to your home right now. That what you want?"
"Fuck you! I have a number, all right? A phone number, it's for a landline somewhere, I don't know where. I leave a message for him, tell him I have a friend who'll be coming to town, give him a number. He calls me back, we set it up!"
I pulled out the BlackBerry again. "Give it to me. Now."
"I can't remember!"
"Try harder, Arzu Bey."
He closed his eyes, struggling to recall the number, then slowly recited a string of digits. I punched them in, dialed, then put the phone to my ear, waiting for it to connect. It rang twice, and then a man's voice answered me in Dutch.
"Hallo?"
"I'm looking for Theunis," I said, in English. "Theunis Mesick."
"He is not here now," the man said. "You leave a message, a number, I will tell to call you back."
"I'll try again later."
I hung up, began replacing all of my things in the carry-all, all the tools, the laptop. I removed the remaining envelope of money, put the handcuff key inside it, then dropped it on the ground. All the while, Arzu was shouting at me.
"You got what you want? You fucking have what you want, you happy, you fucker? You motherfucker! You fucking stay away from my family! You stay away, you stay away from my boys, I will kill you! I will kill you myself, I will fuck your corpse you touch them, you go near them again!"
I zipped the carry-all closed, hoisted it onto my shoulder, and turned to face him. He was breathless, going hoarse in his outrage.
"You fucking stay away from my fucking family!"
There was nothing that I knew about the man in front of me that I liked. Nothing about him that I could think of worth preserving. He kept, bought, and sold slaves. He had sent men to my home to murder me, and in so doing, had nearly cost me Miata, Alena, and a child I hadn't known existed.
What I needed to do now, I knew, was kill him.
"Arzu," I told him, "if I have it my way, you'll never see me again."
I left him there to shout in the darkness, screaming threats and promises that I hoped he'd never be able to keep.
CHAPTER
Twenty-five The number Arzu had given me was for a fuck factory off Marnixstraat. It took two phone calls and almost exactly twenty-four hours to arrange a meeting with Theunis Mesick there. I was in a hurry to make up for the time I'd lost in Trabzon, and went directly from the airport in Amsterdam to meet him.
Mesick was another of the thug brigade, big the way Vladek Karataev had been big, but blond and younger, maybe in his early to mid-twenties. He wore leather pants and a muscle shirt that showed off full-sleeve tattoos on both arms, elaborate skin art that had been thrown together without rhyme or reason, with naked women and death's-head skulls and bleeding roses. I dropped Arzu's name along with two hundred euros, saying that I'd been told he could help me find "the right girl." The combination was enough to buy a trip across town in his company, to a houseboat moored just off the Nieuwe Herengracht canal.
Things were going well, or at least I thought they were, right up to the moment we stepped into the living room of the boat. Then Theunis Mesick turned on me with a knife in his hand.
I was jet-lagged and feeling ragged already, and I paid for it in reaction time. His first cut caught me high on my right forearm, going deep as I tried to get out of the way. The arm went numb with shock for a second as I backpedaled. I was still carrying the small duffel full of my belongings on my shoulder, and I swung it around with my left to block the next stab, and it worked, but he batted the bag away and then I had nothing left.
Knives suck, and fighting someone who has one sucks even worse, because there's no way to survive without getting cut, and I already had one to show for it. For some reason, people think of knives as somehow less dangerous, less lethal than firearms, and it's a bullshit and very dangerous assumption, because, like guns, knives are lethal weapons. Knife fights are something that happen between the Sharks and the Jets, that's it.
Everywhere else, it's not a fight, it's just someone trying to goddamn kill you.
I stumbled backward, trying to backpedal to the door, the way I'd entered. He didn't give me the time, slashing repeatedly for my throat with sharp, quick cuts. It wasn't a particularly long blade, maybe two inches at the most, but two inches of steel will kill just as easily as six. I knocked over furniture, scrambling to the side. There was a vase of tulips on the coffee table, and I kicked that at him as I went past, and it missed, and he drove forward at me again, jabbing repeatedly. He knew enough about using the knife to keep it moving. I managed to grab one of the cushions off the couch, put it between us as a shield. The cushion was purple.
"What the fuck?" It came out of me as a gasp.
"Arzu doesn't give out my name," Mesick answered, and he came at me again.
I used the cushion, tried to catch the knife with it, but again he kept the blade moving, refusing to let it sink. He punched with it repeatedly, and I put a kick out, hit one of his legs, but I missed the knee, and the most I got out of him was a readjustment to the side. I moved right, trying to get away from the blade, losing the cushion as he swiped the knife beneath its edge. The tip caught me on the left side of my abdomen, and I felt the pain of my skin peeling and separating.
It had been maybe six seconds, and already I was bleeding from two separate wounds. He was going to cut me to pieces.
This is why I fucking hate knives.
>
There was a table, maybe for dining, the only thing on it an ashtray. I threw it at him, and it missed, but I followed the ashtray with the table itself, and he had to move to avoid it. Then I followed the table, trying to keep my arms in to protect my vitals, leading with my left hand extended. The knife came around again, split my palm, but before he could bring it back I was inside his guard, my right hand gripping the wrist holding the knife, pinning it against him as I slammed my body against his. We crashed back into a bulkhead, and I smashed my forehead into his face twice, and the second time felt my glasses snap at the bridge. I followed with a knee between his legs, and he still wouldn't let go of the fucking knife. He brought his free hand up to my throat, driving a thumb into my Adam's apple, and I got my bleeding left to his face, hooked my thumb in his nostril, pushing a finger into his eye. He howled, moved off my throat, trying to break my grip where I was threatening to tear his nose from his face, and that put his hand in front of me.
I bit him, hard, breaking the skin at the back of his hand, feeling my teeth meet.
He screamed.
He also dropped the knife.
I let him go, stepped back, hoping that would be enough. It wasn't. He was going for the knife again, bending to reach it, and I let him try, then kicked him in the face. He rocked back, dazed, and I kicked him again, and then once more for good measure.
He slumped and stopped moving.
I kicked the knife clear, then thought that wasn't going to be enough and picked it up myself. My hand was shaking, and I fumbled the grip the first time, had to steady myself before I could actually do it. Oddly, I wasn't feeling too much pain at the moment. Once the adrenaline ran itself out, that would change.
Before that happened, I needed to take care of Mesick. The houseboat, it turned out, belonged to him. The way I figured it, he'd planned to kill me and then maybe take a little journey by boat to someplace nice and dark and secluded where he would be able to dump my body. I'm not sure he thought he'd get away with it or not, but then again, the way he'd come at me with the knife, he hadn't seemed the type to really think these kinds of things through.