by Tigner, Tim
Academic City, Siberia
Anna was going crazy. She had awakened this morning with a love in her heart greater than any she had ever felt, and now she had a block of ice in her chest that she feared would never melt. She had thought the first ten minutes were tough, the ten minutes while she waited at the metro for the next bus to arrive, the bus that would bring Alex to her. Now she realized that those ten minutes of anticipation were nothing, nothing compared to the ten minutes of fear she now faced worrying if Alex would ever come.
In her head Anna knew he had probably just been delayed. Alex was calm enough to wait for the right moment rather than panicking himself into the rash dash as she would have been tempted to make. But what if there was more to it than that? What if he didn’t get off the next bus? What would she do?
Actually, Anna knew what she would do. Alex had told her exactly what to do, which was why she had the block of ice where her heart should be. She could do it, but she did not want to do it alone. Alex had told her to go straight to her mother’s apartment to fetch her. Under no circumstances was she to return to her own apartment, or spend more than a minute or two at her mother’s. With mom in tow, she was to go to the church, hide the Peitho list in the spine of the pulpit Bible, and leave town.
Alex would be furious with her for risking recapture by waiting for him there by the metro, but she didn’t care. It was just twenty minutes. He would understand. It wasn’t as though she were being stupid about it, standing there at the bus stop with conspicuous tears running down her flushed face. No. She was forty meters away, looking through the curtained window of a stand-around-the-bar-tables café. With all the people bustling about the metro during the morning rush hour, she could easily lose herself in the crowd if need be. Six more minutes until the next bus.
Anna looked down at the flimsy plastic cup full of hot sweet tea but did not take a sip. Her stomach wouldn’t take it. She glanced nervously over at the man across from her. Same cheap cup, very different liquid. How did these guys do it?
She shifted her gaze to the busy morning commute taking place on the other side of the glass. Funny the way it looked foreign to her, like the distant memory from an era long passed. Would she ever return to her old life?
Alex’s plan for getting word to her in hiding was a clever one. She would never have thought of it herself, certainly not on the spot as he had. His plan did not require anyone, including Alex himself, to know where she was. How had he come up with it so quickly? Did the CIA teach skills like that, or was Alex just special?
Alex had promised her that when he was safe, he would leave word—a code of sorts—with Father Nikoli at the church. He would tell Father Nikoli that “Father Fyodor would be visiting for Easter.” This would not mean much to Father Nikoli—he didn’t know a Father Fyodor—but he would certainly pass on the information when asked, and Anna would be asking. Then, once it was safe for Anna to come home, Alex would again leave word with Father Nikoli, this time that Father Fyodor’s Easter visit was canceled. It was an unbreakable code, and more importantly, one that even Father Nikoli would know nothing about.
Of course, Alex’s plan assumed that Anna did as she was told. She was not doing as she was told. Rather than running as fast as she could, she was waiting by the bus stop for him. Anna was waiting for him because she could not bear the thought of what she would be running to: days of waiting on pins and needles at the dacha for Father Nikoli to confirm word of Father Fyodor. It would drive her crazy.
As she thought about it, Anna realized that Alex’s plan would only work if he was in a position to get word to Father Nikoli himself. What if he never got out of that complex? How long would she and mom have to fret away there at the dacha? Or suppose something went wrong with the code, say Father Nikoli got sick? Alex would never be able to find her. He knew she would be at a friend’s dacha on Lake Baikal, but Lake Baikal had tens of thousands of dachas spread over hundreds of kilometers of coastline. If her mind was already running wild with blind conjecture, just imagine the demons that would torment her listless mind at Baikal. Those demons were the reason she risked recapture to wait for Alex. Four minutes until the next bus.
Anna had pitied Alex so, being a fugitive in a foreign country. Now she realized that worse things could happen—had happened—to her. Anna was now a fugitive in her own country. At least foreigners have a place to return to, a goal to target, hope. The block of ice got heavier. Without Alex, Anna could only hope to hide, hide until … what? Without Alex, what would it take for this all to be over? No, no, she couldn’t allow herself to think like that now. She had to have faith in the man she loved. Three minutes.
Anna tried to stay with the moment, to focus on the positive, to forget about the fact that the life she had awakened to would never be hers again. God would protect her. Alex would protect her. She just needed to have faith. Sure, her tears were rolling now, but nonetheless there were things to be thankful for. She was healthy, mother was healthy, and they had the perfect place to hide, someplace even Vasily with all his power and connections could never find her.
Although the Zaitsevs had been going to the dacha for decades, it didn’t belong to them. Mother had sold their dacha after father died. This dacha belonged to Uncle Vanya, or rather his widow Tanya, and Tanya lived a thousand kilometers from Torsk. Vasily would have no knowledge of her, and there was no documented connection.
Papa and Uncle Vanya had grown up together, raised their families together, been sent off to war together, and died together. One bomb had destroyed two families, but some things had remained unchanged: to this day the families of the two fallen soldiers vacationed together. The dacha was distant, it was remote, and it was unknown. Father was still taking care of her. She could be thankful for that. Two minutes until the next bus.
Think positive, think positive, Alex is going to be on that bus. He has to be; there’s only so much cruelty one person can be expected to endure in a single day. He’s going to be on the bus, and he’s going to know about some secret CIA passage out of the country. Surely, he’ll take you with him…
It dawned on Anna that that was not necessarily the case. Alex might not take her along. She had pushed him and he had said no. He had explained, but he had said no. It would not be fair to assume that this would change things.
Anna’s thoughts drifted back to the conversation they had a few hours earlier and a world away. To think that someone as intelligent and resourceful as Alex Ferris would shun long-term commitment because he didn’t like the way his father treated his mother. It was incomprehensible, seemed unbelievable. Yet she believed it, or rather she saw that he believed it. It was in his eyes. He silenced her objections and dashed her hopes with a simple phrase: “It’s a genetic lock.” And then the discussion, his visit, their future—was over.
There’s the bus!
Anna ran from the café toward the bus stop. She couldn’t help herself. She desperately needed this to be over—now! If it wasn’t, if it wasn’t … the thought was unbearable.
She hid herself amidst the mob of rush-hour commuters and watched with great anxiety as the doors opened and passengers began getting off. The first wasn’t Alex, nor the second … if only the windows weren’t so dirty. Suddenly Anna found herself being swept onto the bus with the crowd. Why were people getting on before everyone got off. No!
Anna pushed her way to freedom and looked around as the bus pulled away in a choking cloud of exhaust. He wasn’t there. Alex wasn’t there! He had missed the second bus as well.
Anna wanted to collapse but found herself stiffening rather than softening. Like a lion cub suddenly forced to hunt alone, she felt powerful claws emerging from her soft paws. She held her ground.
With the emergent self-reliance came clarity of mind. Anna knew what she had to do. Alex had told her what to do, and that was what she would do. Then it struck her just what she had already done. She had wasted twenty minutes and there was not another second to spare.
I’m coming f
or you mom…
PART IV
Chapter 64
Academic City, Siberia
Bloop … bloop … bloo-bloop... God, he hated that sound. Alex couldn’t see, or smell, or taste, so the maddening bubbles were all he had. Bubbles and pain. Was that laughter in the background? Or was his mind conjuring phantoms, desperate for some diversion from the sound of his own ebbing life?
Bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop... When he was nine, he had over inflated the back tire of his Schwinn Sting-Ray and blown it up by mistake. Though his hands had stung, it was the “POP!—hiss” that scared him. He had dropped the bike and run home from the Shell station with tears in his eyes... His lungs felt like that tire now. Would they make the same POP!—hiss?
Bloobloobloobloo… With his lungs at their limit his carotids began thrashing like shackled snakes and his neck began to crawl. Then the vipers latched their fangs on his optical nerves and his eyes began to swell. Alex could take no more. I’m sorry Anna…
Icy water sluiced his sinuses, sending shockwaves surging through his skull. As their reverberations tore at tissue and bone, cascading flashes of searing white pain climaxed in an electric crack, and then—
~ ~ ~
Alex jolted back into consciousness and a screaming headache. This was the third time he had gone through this, or was it the fourth... It was tempting to pray for it all to be over, but Alex refused to let it come to that. He still had a mission to complete. People were relying on him. One-hundred-sixteen names on a list.
As his world of pain came into focus, Alex realized that he was not hanging upside down this time. There was no barrel of icy water below. That was progress. The second environmental factor to break through the fog and fire to register on his bewildered mind was the horrible smell of sewer gas. Then the events of the past few—hours?—began to come back to him: the dunkings, the beatings, the blackouts.
Alex sat up. He was in a dark, damp box with crumbly concrete walls and a rusty iron door. He heard water dripping behind him but did not have the energy to turn around and inspect the source. He did not want to move at all for fear of bumping his tortured feet again. Tortured feet, that was it. That was what had awakened him. He had rolled in his delirium and slapped a raw foot against a rough wall.
As he sat there in the dark, images of the torture sessions began flashing through his mind like a medieval slide show. Stop it, Alex. Don’t think about what they’ve done to you, or what they might do to you next. Focus on how you’re going to beat them. He would have liked to say those words aloud, if for no other reason than to learn he could still speak, but he knew they would be listening, so he kept the pep talk to himself.
He heard footsteps and felt his heart begin to race in response. Then he heard a stubborn deadbolt scrape aside. The door groaned open and Alex saw the bottom half of two beefy soldiers.
“Get out here,” one soldier said.
Alex took a meditative breath and crab-walked out of the cell trying to keep the weight off his wailing feet. As soon as his shoulders cleared the door the soldiers lifted him off the ground by the arms and sat him down on a small triangular stool in the middle of the room. They cuffed his hands behind him.
“Do not move.”
Alex was in a round room with eight doors. Six of the doors were similar to the one that led to his own suite—short iron portals with heavy rusted hinges. Misery had company here… The six looked toward the center of the room like so many hopeless eyes, gloomily awaiting the answer to the question that now taunted Alex: Who or what would be coming through the main door?
It was time to find out. The soldiers opened the main door and took flanking positions outside. Then a man in the uniform of a KGB general walked into the room. He wore an appraising look on his handsome face that seemed to say, “So you’re Alex Ferris; let me have a look at you,” but he said nothing. He just stared.
Alex recognized the general as the man who had captured him in the exit booth, but this second glance also gave him the impression that he knew the face from somewhere else. The plot was thickening.
The general took a long, slow walk around Alex’s stool, then grabbed a chair from the side of the room and sat it down a couple of feet in front of Alex. “I am General Vasily Karpov of the KGB. You are Alex Ferris of the CIA. It’s time we got acquainted.”
“Yes,” Alex said. “I’ve come a long way to meet you, Vasily.” Alex saw a flash of displeasure cross his captor’s face at the disrespectful use of his first name. There was something in the gesture that Alex found familiar. Perhaps their paths had crossed in the Middle East. Alex decided to put the momentary imbalance to work in his favor. “I know you from the Middle East, don’t I Vasily?”
The guards tensed in the doorway like bulldogs on leashes. They wanted a sign to attack, but none was forthcoming. “No, you don’t. Tell me, Alex, why are you here?”
Vasily was offering him the choice between a pleasant conversation with a general and immediate return to the company of Frick and Frack. Smart guy.
Alex realized he was about to play a game of high-stakes brinksmanship with his hands bound behind his back and half his cognitive power tied up with pain suppression. Lovely. “I’m investigating a murder. What did you think I was doing here?”
“Whose murder?”
Alex knew it would be foolish to push for answers to his own questions, or to refuse outright to answer Vasily, but by asking questions himself, he was rewriting the rules. Perhaps he would find the right button and provoke an unscripted response.
Alex saw Vasily pulling at the hair on the back of his fingers and realized he wasn’t the only one under stress. Fancy that. “My brother’s murder. Did you kill him?” Alex was not sure where he was going with this, he’d had no time to analyze or to plan. He was flying blind on intuition, hoping he didn’t crash into a mountain or stall an engine. It was dangerous, but he would be in danger no matter what he did. Intuition was all he had.
“Of course not,” Vasily said. Then he smiled. “My son did.”
“Your son?”
“My son, Victor. Why—“
“Oh, you mean Jason?” Alex thought he might throw Vasily with that, but the general just nodded, appearing nonplussed.
“Why were you looking for your brother’s murderer here?”
“My brother left a note. Was Yarik a friend of yours?” This time Alex got a flinch, and this time he recognized the face. Tumblers began falling into place, freeing locks in his mind and opening doors that Alex did not know were closed. As they swung open, his situation fell under a completely new light. Was it possible? His heart screamed No! even as his mind concluded Yes. There was a buzzing in the background, but Alex ignored it. This was too big. His mind was sprinting, his pores were sweating … the noise came again.
“Answer me! What did the note say?”
With some effort Alex brought his eyes back into focus. “Have you ever been to Geneva?”
“Your brother left you a note that asked if you had ever been to Geneva?”
“No, Vasily, I’m asking you: Have you ever been to Geneva?”
“Not in your lifetime. Now—”
“The note said, ‘The problems come from Irkutsk.’ Alex’s voice was shallow—not the best for this sort of game, but it was all he could muster. He looked up to watch Vasily’s face while he asked the next question, and saw that the general was giving him a funny look. “When?” Alex asked. “When were you in Geneva?”
“Nineteen fifty-seven.”
Vasily kept talking, but Alex did not hear. He could not process any more information than what his own mind was throwing at him. If he weren’t a professional investigator … if it hadn’t been bothering him for so long …
Even as the soldiers picked him off the stool and wrapped the rope around his ankles, Alex hardly noticed what was going on outside the confines of his mind.
Chapter 65
Academic City, Siberia
As Vasily stood before th
e armored entrance to the interrogation suite, he found himself remembering the rumpled bed in Anna’s apartment and picturing what had happened there. He was a professional interrogator, but this one was going to be personal. Alex had crossed the line.
Alex had now enjoyed a full twenty-four hours of Knyaz hospitality. According to the professionals, it took that long for a prisoner’s new reality to sink in. Alex had already endured a rough stay, but now Vasily would really start turning the screws, Spanish Inquisition style.
Vasily was secretly handicapped as to how far he could turn. Because he was going to frame Alex for killing Gorbachev, he could leave no traces of torture or coercion on Alex’s body. That meant no chemicals, no cuts, no scrapes or holes or even significant bruises. It was a shame, and it was a challenge, but Vasily was always up to those.
Alex’s round-the-clock torture began with a dark, damp, decrepit old cell that was too short to stand up in and uncomfortable to lie in. Water dripped constantly from a small hole in the cell’s ceiling down to an open sewer pipe on the floor, one just large enough for the rats to use. The trickle was Alex’s drinking water, his washing water, and his toilet. Aside from the drip … drip … drip, the only other attractions in the cell were the Judas peephole and a trough bolted to the door. The trough caught the tasteless slop that a custodian poured in through a pipe once a day to keep Alex alive. The pros said holding cells were supposed to dishearten, humble, weaken and drain their occupants. Surely his version would rate a ten.
To further Alex’s mental destabilization, Vasily was making every effort to remove all psychological grounding. He established no routines, except for the lack thereof. He scheduled feedings, beatings, and interrogation sessions to take place at odd intervals and to last different lengths of time. Last night, for example, after one four-hour session, the guards returned Alex to his cell for just twelve minutes before coming to get him again.