Coercion

by Tigner, Tim

  She missed Alex. With him there, she had been living in a retreat, a hideout. Now all she could see were the walls of a prison cell, and she felt condemned to solitary. Every time the babushkas asked “Where’s your man” her heart would wither a little, and “California” would clog her throat.

  Staring at the flame beneath the kettle, Anna wondered what emotions she really held for him. Did she love Alex the man as she had confessed the night before, or just the excitement he brought to her life? Maybe it was an extension of her feelings as a caregiver, as doctor to patient, made more personal because she had brought him into her home. Only time would provide those answers. One question, however, did get clearly resolved: Vasily was not the one for her. He was a lump of coal next to Alex’s flame.

  With that thought her depression turned to fear. Tonight could well be her last night with Alex. If not for her surprise last night, he might be gone already. If Alex finished his investigation of that horrible place today, he would be going home tomorrow, home to a place so distant and different from Torsk that it might as well be Mars. Anna looked to the heavens and said a little prayer.

  The clock was ticking away her countdown to work, but try as she might, Anna could not get her mind off Alex. She was so caught up in thinking about him that she couldn’t do anything else, and now she would be late.

  She poured another cup of tea. What was it about Alex that had gotten under her skin so? Their backgrounds had very little in common, other than the death of immediate family members, and that was hardly a pillar to build a future on. And their countries, though no longer “cold,” remained distant, and cautious. Still, Alex was honest, with himself and with her. He was interesting, both intellectually and for his fresh perspective on things. He was a gentleman, and a handsome one at that. Those were all important, but they weren’t the key. The key, she decided, was character. Alex was a man who would throw himself on the back of raging beast to save a friend; who would risk radiation to save a little girl; who wouldn’t avail himself of a beautiful woman just because he could…

  Was that what she wanted in life? Anna pulled her knees tightly to her chest and cozied up to her mug of tea like a mother bird to her egg. More than anything, she wanted a good father for her children. That was more important to her than a good husband, although she realized that an inextricable link joined the two. Was Alex paternalistic? Intuitively she felt certain that he was, although he gave her the impression that he thought otherwise. He was a foreigner, so her reading could be off. How did they raise children in America? What did they tell them about Russia?

  He also had his mysterious side.... Was he hiding something? Ashamed? There were so many questions, and yet she had so little time to get the answers. If she didn’t discuss these things with Alex tonight, it would be too late. But tonight was too early… What should she do? The answer came with her next sip of tea: early or not, she had to know.

  Anna had never considered life with a non-Russian before. Life outside of Russia, even outside of Academic City, was too big a leap for one mental bound.

  Too big a leap ... She still had little local steps to worry about, like how to reliably care for her mother, and how to tactfully get rid of Vasily Karpov. Was Vasily out there right now, guarding her like a jealous stalker? Probably not, but possibly. What would Alex think of that situation? Would it scare him off? Make him jealous? Anna wasn’t sure. The last thing they needed right now was a jealous suitor to further confuse their already convoluted relationship.

  Anna drank the last swallow of her tea and decided not to mention this morning’s incident to Alex. Vasily Karpov would remain her little secret.

  Chapter 56

  Academic City, Siberia

  Alex awoke at three a.m. to find Anna looking at him. They had spent their last evening together talking about themselves and their dreams. Yet somehow, he had avoided discussion of that bothersome itchy elephant. Now it was in the middle of the room, and Anna’s look was telling him it was time to scratch.

  He wished she were sleeping. He hated goodbyes in general, and this one would be the very worst kind. In all likelihood, it would be goodbye forever. His time with Anna had been so intense, so extraordinary and profound…. He had hoped to keep his departure as simple as the day before, to reduce the moment of farewell to a kiss on a sleepy forehead. He had hoped to leave Russia without the baggage of a gut-wrenching goodbye. But that was not to be.

  He stroked her hair in silence, unsure of what to say.

  Anna did not share his indecision. “I think we should be together, Alex.”

  Alex felt his soul rip as the words crossed her lips. Of course he had told himself the same thing, more times than one, but he had not expected to hear those words from her.

  In a couple of hours, he would either have the information he had come to Russia for, and would be fleeing the country with it, or he would be in the hands of the KGB, and would be paying for it. In either scenario, he would not be seeing Anna anytime soon, if ever again. The thought saddened him more than she could know. How could he explain that togetherness was what he too wanted—no less intensely than she—and then walk away? He couldn’t. He couldn’t explain it, and he knew it would be foolish to try.

  The truth was, at that moment Alex did not ever want to leave the intelligent, loving, balanced, brave beauty before him. But he knew that would change. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

  Alex spoke seven languages, and that adage was common to them all—often coupled with the equally prominent zebra that can’t change its stripes. His infidelity was fated, a mortal lock. His father had strayed from his wonderful mother time and again, so he too would stray. It would be unforgivably irresponsible for him to assume he could fight the very DNA from which his heart was made. If his father had been an alcoholic, Alex wouldn’t drink. As it was… He could not give in to the emotions of the day and lead Anna down a rosy path knowing that he would inevitably break her heart, especially given how far that path would take her. A clean break was the only decent move a gentleman in his shoes could make.

  He looked at the floor and said, “I just can’t.”

  Anna didn’t make a sound, but tears began to dot the parquet floor. Alex knew her heart was silently melting. He wanted to look her in the eye so she could see his pain, but he knew that would not be fair. He wanted to dive into her lips and forget who he was, but that too would be a sin. He wanted to hold her, love her, and tell her he would never leave her. Instead, he forced himself to rise.

  Ten minutes later he was ready to go.

  Alex feared pleas and cries as he moved to the door, but Anna didn’t assault him with either. She just stood there, looking lovely, looking forlorn. Alex opened the door with his head held low, but he could not bring himself to step through. He closed it again and turned to face his angel.

  “Before I go, I should tell you a little more about my father and me…”

  Chapter 57

  Academic City, Siberia

  Vasily’s eyes sprang open like the hungry mouths of newborn birds as a shocking thought jolted him from sleep. Only in the calm of the night with his mind freed from the labors of a conquering general’s daily grind had his processor found the wherewithal to make the subtle connections that sounded the alarm. The clock read five a.m.

  Now he lay there staring at the ceiling, chewing on his latest insight while the sharp taste of bile grew ever more bitter in his mouth. Anna was seeing Alex Ferris.

  Vasily would normally have figured it out as soon as he heard the babushka’s words—“You’re too late. She’s already fallen for that handsome foreign patient of hers”—but Anna’s rebuff, coming just thirty-seconds earlier, had him feeling like James Bond’s martini.

  The babushka had needled Vasily from a bench by the entrance to Anna’s building, much to the amusement of her peers. He had hurried past rather than inquiring, embarrassed for the first time in ages and eager to put the incident out of his mind. It was a scor
nful, puerile mistake.

  Before berating himself further, Vasily decided to dissect his subconscious conclusion. On the surface it seemed far-fetched. What were the odds of Anna and Alex meeting? He tossed this question around a bit until he came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. He wasn’t a gambler. Forget the odds; look at the facts.

  Vasily knew from an obsession-driven background investigation that Anna had never been swept off her feet. This was clearly not due to a lack of opportunity on her part, but rather to her exceptionally high standards. Therefore, Vasily reasoned, it would take somebody extraordinary to win Anna over, somebody like himself, or, he spat out a surge of bile, perhaps an American.

  Yesterday Vasily had been caught up on the word “handsome,” and had let “foreign” fly right by. Chinamen and Mongols were the foreigners that first came to mind in Novosibirsk, not Americans. As a handsome American, Alex embodied one thing that Vasily did not: the appeal of an exotic, forbidden fruit. That and a much narrower age gap.

  The babushka had also called the man Anna had fallen for “her patient.” How would the old lady know that, unless Anna had treated him at home rather than in the hospital? Plus the babushka had obviously seen Ferris; the word “handsome” made that clear. Her wording further implied an ongoing relationship, which in turn implied that his condition had been serious. But if Anna’s patient were seriously ill he would be treated in the hospital, unless he couldn’t go to the hospital. Who but Ferris couldn’t go to the hospital?

  That was one long chain of supposition—and the longer the weaker—but there was more. There was the news from Yarik, news that had taken a week to filter up. Yarik had sent word through a hermit that the KGB should establish checkpoints to look for Alex on the roads leading into Novosibirsk from the south. So Vasily knew that Alex was headed this way. But neither Yarik nor Alex had surfaced, and eight days had elapsed since the message.

  Vasily now realized that he had handicapped Yarik when he gave him the order to bring Alex in unharmed. He had not considered it a factor at the time—it was like an engineer worrying about the power drain from an aircraft carrier’s radio. But suppose he had gravely underestimated Alex’s power. His request had also virtually guaranteed hand-to-hand combat. Was Alex the David to Vasily’s Goliath? Vasily had to admit that the facts on hand—a wounded foreigner and a missing Yarik—fit nicely with that nasty conclusion, unbelievable though it may seem.

  Each of the three points was thin to very thin, but together they reinforced each other like twigs in a bundle. Vasily knew his conclusion might not be particularly robust, but it wasn’t flimsy either. And somehow, as tenuous as it all seemed, it still felt right.

  Rather than feeling pleased with himself for figuring this out, Vasily found himself getting angry. He was not sure why. Welcome or not, catching Alex at Anna’s would be a victory. Of course he was angry with himself for being slow to catch on, but the emotion he felt was different, it was more primitive. Eventually he got a handle on it. Finding Alex there would confirm that the American had both bested Yarik and seduced Anna. Vasily wasn’t angry, he was jealous. It was the first time in thirty years that emotion had crossed his cortex.

  A smoldering fury began to burn within him. Vasily had caught the look in Anna’s eyes and seen the drape of her robe when she first opened her apartment door, confident that the knock had come from another. That look had quashed his composure and caused his pitiful oversight with the babushkas. He had been blocking the image out ever since. Now it was back, as painful and distressing as a dagger in his side. Like the thought that Yarik could be bested in combat, the idea that he might have serious competition for a woman had simply never entered his mind. Vasily had always enjoyed his way with women. Always.

  Then Vasily realized that he could still possess Anna. Her affair with Alex did not rule that out. In fact, if he would still have her, it locked it in. By consorting with a spy, Anna had committed a serious crime. That gave Vasily a hold on her he might otherwise never have had. Perhaps that dagger in his side was really a double-edged sword. Did he still want Anna? That resounding answer came without hesitation: he wanted her.

  Vasily was systematically finding the answers, but the questions kept coming as well. He took them to the shower. Where was Alex? What was his plan? Did he know about the Knyaz? What about Yarik? The answers, he realized, were all in one place. He would confront Anna—now, this morning, immediately.

  As Vasily toweled off, a wonderful, terrible thought occurred to him. He should take Medusa with him to Anna’s. There was a chance that Alex would be there. If he was, then Medusa would help Vasily bring him in unscathed. A little paralysis would also add the perfect touch of poetic justice to that historic occasion. After all, it was Alex’s search for his brother’s killer that brought him to Russia. The least Vasily could do was explain it to him first hand.

  Taking Medusa would require a trip to The Complex—Vasily didn’t dare to keep something so incriminating in his apartment. Could he afford the time? Might that extra delay allow Alex to slip through his fingers? There was no way of knowing. He certainly liked the idea… Then Vasily remembered Victor and Yarik, and the decision was made. They had both underestimated Alex; Vasily would not.

  Chapter 58

  Academic City, Siberia

  After crouching in an icy ditch for nearly an hour, Alex was not nearly as pleased with himself as he had been when he first dreamt up his plan. Witches’ tits and well-diggers’ asses had nothing on him. Regardless of the chilling reminder, he found it hard to believe that he, alone and unarmed, was trying to break into a fortified KGB complex. Was he crazy? He looked up at the crescent moon. Was it smiling at him, or laughing?

  The white sheet he was using as camouflage did not offer much warmth, so he began swinging his arms and legs in long arcs, one at a time, like a demented ballerina. Perhaps he would howl at the moon when he finished, just to complete the picture. The sad thing was, truth be told, he was glad for the extreme cold. It augmented the humor he was using to distract himself from guilt and sorrow.

  Alex was waiting beside the access road to the KGB complex, just out of sight of the entry gate. A couple of yards down from him in the middle of the road, a large cardboard box defied the wind. It was bait. He was betting that whoever came along on the road would stop. Who wouldn’t want to see what treasure had fallen off a truck in the middle of the night? You could always count on greed.

  If all went as planned, the driver would stop to inspect the box and Alex would sneak out from the drainage ditch and slip beneath his vehicle. Simple, right? And Alex had thought ahead. He had tied a piece of heavy-duty cardboard to his back to help him slide along the half mile of snow-covered road to the gate. Sure, a list of conditions would have to be met for his plan to work: just one vehicle, suitable clearance, driver alone, engine left running; but given the time and place he figured he had amicable odds.

  Amicable odds… Pulling back his glove to see the time—a quarter-to-six—Alex admitted to himself that he was gambling big time. He was gambling that in the dark, freezing, pre-dawn hours, nobody would be paying much attention to anything. Fortunately there was no fresh snow, so he wouldn’t be plowing the road with his head or leaving furrows with his heels. Nonetheless it was a risky plan, no question about it. Hopping under that jeep would be the point of no return. He could hardly pretend to be casually copping a ride. Nor once inside could he claim confusion. He would be an ex-CIA operative caught breaking into a KGB compound. Yes, he was crazy.

  Irrespective of the risk, fear had given way to boredom and that was now yielding to anxiety. Alex tried laughing at himself and his absurd predicament, but he seemed to have run out of jokes. He rubbed his upper arm, attempting to thaw his humerus. Nothing. There wasn’t a wisecrack to wangle.

  He looked at the luminescent dial on his watch for the third time in as many minutes. It was now six o’clock. If this plan didn’t work within the next forty-five minutes or so, dawn wou
ld force him to fall back on plan B—marching through the front gate as Colonel Andrey Demerko on special assignment for General Yarik. He did not have a car, and the busses were not running yet, but he would think of something. Still, he hoped that would not be necessary. Even sleepy guards paid attention when you knocked on the door at this hour. Little Kimberly was worth it.

  Alex had studied the guardhouse and entry/exit procedures the day before. He had not walked away with a warm-and-fuzzy feeling. The checkpoint was set up like a border-patrol station, with magnetically sealed doors at both ends of a glass booth. Everyone entering the complex on foot had to stand in the aquarium while the inspecting soldier verified his documents behind a glass partition. Because of the way the doors worked, by the time a visitor knew there was a problem, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. These guys were not amateurs.

  At last Alex saw headlights. His heart leapt as he dropped flat to lie motionless beneath the sheet. It was a jeep, and a general’s jeep no less. Clean cars were a rarity in Siberia in the winter, but this one shone in the starlight and its flag was easy to spot. Would a VIP vehicle stop? It depended on who was driving. He hoped it was just a chauffeur.

  Alex held his breath as the headlights illuminated his lure. The jeep slowed … and stopped. As the lone occupant got out and walked toward the front, Alex scurried to the back and slid underneath. He wriggled toward the front axel on his cardboard sleigh as quickly as silence would allow. With each inch his heart tried to pop out the top of his chest and his lungs protested the noxious exhaust, but still it felt good to engage.