She turned her head and stared at the shadowy brick wall past the crooked sidewalk. Soon, she would navigate that uneven pavement in high heels and a miniskirt, on a mission suitable for a prostitute, or so the men sitting with her in the SUV told her. Viktor clearly didn’t agree, likely because he was the only bratva soldier that could process the full scope of their involvement.
Viktor knew that the Federation Security Services would descend upon Novosibirsk in full force after Vektor’s destruction, leaving no stones unturned. A drug-addled prostitute posed a security risk to the bratva down the line. They would have to kill her, raising questions about her disappearance, which would inevitably lead to the Vektor scientist in question. Since all of the prostitutes in Novosibirsk were owned by the Solntsevskaya Bratva, federal authorities couldn’t ignore a possible connection between the mafiya and Vektor. It didn’t take a lot of intelligence or imagination to envision a hardcore crackdown, something she assumed the bratva leadership wished to avoid at all costs in Russia’s third largest commercial center.
She heard one of their radios chirp, followed by a hushed conversation. The front passenger shifted in his seat, turning his head to address her for the first time tonight.
“It’s time. You get in line and pay the fee to get in. Go to the bar on the right side of the club and look for a man wearing sunglasses, drinking a Heineken. Stand directly in front of his bar stool. He’ll finish the beer and leave suddenly, giving you the seat. Your mark is seated directly to the right.”
“Facing the bar?” she asked.
“What the fuck do you mean facing the bar?” the man spat.
“Is he to the right of the seat, from a frame of reference defined by facing the bar?”
“Shut the fuck up and do your job,” he said, which spurred the man next to her into action.
He reached across her chest with his right hand to open the door, purposely rubbing the back of his hand against her breasts. In a blur, she jabbed a pressure point on the offending arm, just behind his elbow, disabling the arm and causing him to lurch forward in pain. She hooked her left arm around his neck pulling him back and toward her in the seat, easing a three-inch serrated blade against his neck.
“Touch me again and I’ll kill you,” she whispered in his ear.
The man attempted to struggle, but she kept him locked in a tight grip, pushing the knife an infinitesimal distance into his neck, bringing him closer to a carotid artery rupture that would end his miserable days. She didn’t flinch when a black semiautomatic pistol appeared between the headrests, aimed at her head.
“And I’ll kill you,” the front passenger said.
With her free, right hand, she quickly gripped his wrist at the top of the radial bone, squeezing fiercely, while pushing his hand upward and to the left. The swift pressure-point manipulation instantly opened his hand. No amount of willpower or brute strength could overcome this painless application of ancient Chinese medicine. The pistol slid out of his hand and fell, quickly snatched out of the air by Reynolds. Before the situation could spiral out of control, she released the man next to her and stepped out of the vehicle. The front passenger, known only as Ivan, kicked open his door, jumping onto the concrete sidewalk.
Reynolds unloaded and disassembled the GSh-18 pistol in less than two seconds, tossing the four major pieces onto the sidewalk and throwing the loaded magazine as far as she could manage over a wrought-iron fence on the other side of the street.
“Tell your people to stay out of my fucking way,” she said, turning toward Dusya Kovalchuk Street, leaving Ivan speechless with a strange look on his face that oddly resembled respect.
***
Pyotr Roskov took another sip of his vodka martini and stared wistfully at the group of women gyrating on the club’s main dance floor. Tightly stretched body dresses dominated the crowd, leaving little to his active imagination. He was still several drinks away from joining that throng of beauties, which he knew from experience would be too late. By that point, dozens of sharply dressed, clearly wealthy men would be in the mix, leaving him no chance of scoring anything beyond a few annoyed looks. It was the same story for him every weekend, and strangely enough, he had no intention of altering his routine.
He considered this a form of penance for having left Saint Petersburg so readily after completing his graduate studies. Saint Petersburg had been a veritable international melting pot compared to Novosibirsk. The streets were packed with foreign travelers, and the city itself attracted a worldwide residential clientele. As Russia’s gateway to Europe, he found the city a marvelous break from the droll of Moscow and other stiflingly gray Russian cities. Most Russians considered Saint Petersburg to be the true heart of Russia, reminiscent of the Tsarist grandeur that defined centuries of imperial prosperity, but ultimately led to the Bolshevik Revolution, which began with the storming of the Winter Palace on the banks of the city’s Neva River.
The communists couldn’t dull Leningrad, despite decades of uninspired construction and political marginalization. Even the Germans couldn’t destroy it with an eight hundred and seventy-two day long siege. In fact, the Germans had unknowingly saved the city from becoming the shithole Moscow had become. In 1917, the German troops invaded Estonia, threatening the city with invasion and forcing the newly empowered Soviets to transfer the capitol of Russia to Moscow. The communist riff-raff spent the next seventy-four years building one “people’s” structure after another in Moscow, each one bigger and less architecturally inspired than the one before it. Saint Petersburg saw its share of this Constructivist architecture, but most of this occurred on the outskirts, expanding a sea of gray blockhouse apartment buildings around the picturesque, cosmopolitan city.
Without a doubt, he was being punished for accepting a high-paid position at Vektor Laboratories in place of less lucrative offers around Saint Petersburg. Novosibirsk was the antithesis of Saint Petersburg in nearly every way. Founded a mere quarter of a century before the Revolution, solely as a transportation hub to the eastern provinces, Novosibirsk grew up under the communists, who had no interest in the city beyond exploitation. On the banks of the Ob River, Novosibirsk was developed into a massive industrial center under Stalin’s industrialization dictates, eventually claiming the title of third most populous city in Russia. Boring, ugly and culturally flat, Novosibirsk still hadn’t emerged from its communist shell.
Pyotr hated it, which is why he repeatedly found himself standing in line at Diesel, waiting to pay an outrageous cover charge to drink overpriced alcohol, all while staring at women doing their best to escape Novosibirsk and hoping one of them might eventually see him as that ticket out. At least until they woke up the next morning and realized that they were not in the luxury digs of an upwardly mobile Russian businessman. It was a pathetic strategy to get laid, but it was the best he could come up with in this horrible city without paying a prostitute, and he wasn’t about to travel down that path. His life here was sad enough without that.
He downed half of the martini, resolved to hop off the stool and beat his competition to the punch, but that courage retreated just as quickly, replaced with the practical realization that his efforts would only result in the loss of his seat. Instead, he turned to the bartender and ordered another martini. Before his drink arrived, he spied a woman walking in his direction. This could be trouble if she belonged to the guy seated next to him at the bar.
He stole another glance at the man, careful not to stare too long. He looked like a mafiya type. Tattoos covered his thick, muscular forearm, menacingly visible under cuffed sleeves. The fact that he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses was disturbing. Maybe he was high. Maybe he was hiding a black eye. Maybe he was just a badass motherfucker that never removed his sunglasses. Pyotr couldn’t think of one scenario that didn’t scare him.
The man arrived soon after Pyotr had taken a seat, proceeding to smoke cigarettes and pound Heinekens at an alarming rate. The last thing he needed next to him was a drunk and disg
runtled member of the Solntsevskaya gang. These scumbags did whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted with no repercussions. They were above the law and seemed to thrive on finding new ways to flaunt their untouchable status. A wrong look or accidentally bumped shoulder could land you in the hospital, or dead. As much as he didn’t want to give up his seat, he’d resolved to abandon his post if this guy hit five Heinekens. Now he’d leave immediately, giving up his seat to a man who could beat him within an inch of his life in front of the police.
Without staring at the woman approaching, he started to stand, ready to pay for his drink and find another perch to observe the evening’s festivities. To his surprise, Mr. Sunglasses slapped a one-thousand ruble note on the bar and walked away from his seat, headed toward the bathroom. The woman’s eyes widened at the prospect of finding a seat at the packed bar, paying no attention to the mobster as he brushed past her. Now he could check her out and celebrate his unbelievable good fortune. He could count the number of times a hot woman sat next to him anywhere in public on his thumb. Judging by what he saw before she took the seat, tonight was nothing short of a miracle.
Upon first inspection, he could tell that she was different than the rest of the women at the club. Her confidence was natural, not the practiced indifference on display in every corner of the club. Her black dress was chic and form fitting, but didn’t devolve into the gratuitous body-flaunting spectacle of skintight one-piece dresses dominating the dance floor. Her soft, porcelain face was framed by shiny, jet black hair that ended at the middle of her neck. He caught the attention of her light blue eyes momentarily and offered her a weak smile, which she returned without an air of superiority. That alone set her apart from every other woman in the club, and possibly all of Novosibirsk. When she spoke to the bartender in decent, yet clearly academic Russian, he almost fell off his stool.
“I’ll have whatever he’s having,” she said, turning to Pyotr. “That’s a vodka drink, right?”
He hadn’t noticed that his replacement martini had already arrived. “O-of course. Y-yes. Dry martini,” he stammered.
“Perfect,” she said, turning her attention to the tangle of bodies on the dance floor.
Neither of them said anything for several moments. While Pyotr struggled to come up with some kind of clever line that would ensnare the young woman who had unknowingly stumbled into his presence, her drink arrived, causing her to turn back to the bar. Still unable to decide on a clever pickup line, he stalled a little longer, resigned to the likelihood that she’d pay for her drink and scurry away from him. That was the excuse he easily conjured for delaying one of his brilliant utterances. When she reached for her purse and started to pull out a jumble of ruble notes, he decided to take unprecedented action. He offered to pay for her drink.
“No, no. Please allow me. It’s the least I can do for a traveler stuck in this godforsaken city,” he said, not exactly happy with his delivery.
“The city’s not that bad, but I’ll accept your offer. Travel funds are a bit tight for this trip,” she said.
“Well, you certainly picked the wrong place to conserve rubles,” he added, feeling a little more at ease with himself and the situation.
“Thank you. I had to experience the famous Russian nightlife at some point during my trip. This is the first stop that offered more than a dank pub filled with shady characters,” she replied, closing her tiny purse.
“You’re more than welcome…though I’m afraid this club is filled with plenty of shady characters. You’re riding the Trans-Siberian?”
“I’m writing a travel story about the journey, but I’m doing it backwards. I started in Vladivostok,” she said.
“Ughh. Another charming Russian city.”
“The downtown area was interesting. A little gloomy overall, but it was an easy introduction to Russia. I’ve never travelled here before.”
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“Sidney, Australia. It made sense for me to start on the eastern end of the railway,” she said.
“Well, you should have skipped Novosibirsk. I’ve been here for two years, and I ran out of things to see and do within the first few days of arrival. My name is Pyotr, by the way.”
“Katie,” she said, exposing her Australian accent.
He couldn’t believe his luck. A seat next to him opened up at the bar and an attractive foreigner slid right in. Australian on top of that! He wished there was some way he could ask her to continue the conversation in English without sounding creepy. He loved to listen to Australian women on the television. He decided there was no way to do this that didn’t end with a drink in his face. He had to play this cool.
“What do you do here that keeps you in the city against your will?” she asked, reaching for her drink on the bar.
“I’m a scientist. More of a biologist, actually.”
Her eyes lit up for a moment, which he took as a good sign. He had considered adding his title and function at Vektor, or completely lying to her about what he did in Novosibirsk. Instead, he went with the truth for once, and it seemed to pay off.
“I studied biology for a year before switching to journalism. I loved the basic biology courses, but chemistry turned out to be a problem for me. I should have seen that coming,” she said.
“You probably had a much better university experience with a journalism concentration. Biology kept me locked up inside the academic buildings. Not much of a social life, I’m afraid,” he said, trying not to throw back his entire martini in one gulp.
“And here you are in your favorite city?” she said, teasing him.
He was starting to feel a little connection with her. Maybe she could tell that he wasn’t like the rest of the crowd packed into the club. Not many molecular biologists dancing to painfully outdated ’80s music on the dance floor in front of them.
“Exactly. I suppose it’s not so bad, but it’s nothing like Saint Petersburg,” he said.
“Do you think I should make the trip out to see it? The Trans-Siberian ends in Moscow, but it seems such a waste to miss Saint Petersburg.”
“You absolutely must make the trip. This may seem forward, but I would consider joining you for the journey. I spent seven years in Saint Petersburg and could be your tour guide. It’s the most fascinating of all Russian cities. You can’t miss it under any circumstances.”
“How can I turn down an offer like that?” she said excitedly in Australian-accented English. “Sorry. I have a tendency to switch to English when I’m drinking. This is a strong drink,” she said, switching back to Russian.
“Pretty much straight vodka. A little more civilized than the traditional Russian method of drinking vodka,” he said, in his best English.
“You speak English? That will make things easier. I can feel this going right to my head. I don’t know how you all pound shot after shot of vodka. Cheers,” she said, raising her glass.
Pyotr downed his drink and watched her do the same. He could listen to her talk all night in that accent. This had worked out perfectly so far, but he still had his work cut out for him. He had so many angles to pursue. A trip on the Trans-Siberian with her to Moscow and eventually Saint Petersburg was the grand prize, guaranteed to result in multiple sexual encounters in grand fashion. He might have to play it really cool tonight and sacrifice the more immediate opportunity in order to achieve that long-term goal. A hasty sexual encounter tonight could lead to an awkward situation, dissolving his invitation to accompany her on the train. He was getting ahead of himself and overthinking the entire situation. He had a tendency to do this, and it often resulted in disaster. He wouldn’t make that mistake with this young lady. He’d go with the flow on this one. The flow of alcohol to be precise, which he would facilitate.
“Two shots of vodka. The good stuff,” he said to the bartender, who barely acknowledged him.
“I don’t know about shots. Straight drinks hit me hard,” she said, still smiling.
“One shot to toast
your arrival in Novosibirsk. It’s a tradition. When you drink vodka quickly, it doesn’t hit you as hard. That’s how we can drink so much,” he said, not sure if that made any sense.
“I suppose one shot won’t kill me. This is really exciting,” she said.
Four vodka shots later, they departed the club for his apartment, swaying arm in arm down the chilly street. He had decided to hedge his bet on the train trip and take what he could get up front. She’d become extremely “friendly” after the second shot, resting her hand permanently on his leg and eventually holding his hand with the other. All of this could change tomorrow, when the effects of the vodka wore off and she was faced with the choice of spending the next four or five days on a train with a virtual stranger or slipping quietly out of town to continue her journey alone. Alcohol had a wonderful way of making even the most impractical suggestions or plans sound feasible for a limited period of time.
They walked for about fifteen minutes, stopping to kiss and grope each other in the shadows at random intervals along the way. When they turned onto Planovaya Street, he could see his apartment building in the distance, situated above a pleasant bakery and café. He would bring Katie some coffee and pastries in the morning. They crossed the well-lit intersection, dodging the odd car still negotiating Novosibirsk at one-thirty in the morning.
By the time they reached the door to his apartment building, he suddenly realized that Katie was supporting much of his weight. He felt dizzy, almost like he was floating. Finding the keys to the building seemed nearly impossible, though he managed to produce them. Katie helped him open the door, and they somehow made it up the stairs to the third floor. He tried to think back and count the number of shots they drank at the nightclub, but his memory was hazy. He couldn’t remember the name of the last club they left. He must have overdone it at some point, which was a real shame.
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