Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)

by JC Andrijeski

Thinking harder, she tried to recall more specifics of what Golunsky had said.

  But unpacking that conversation could wait, too.

  Right now, she had to deal with this person calling himself “Raguel.” Whatever his source of information, the gray-eyed man was lying to her right now. He had to be lying.

  Yet somehow, she didn’t believe he was.

  “I will take him,” she found herself saying, speaking louder, to the ment standing behind her. “Release him. I will determine who he is. Not here... at Party Headquarters.”

  When she turned her head, the bearded police officer looked dumbstruck.

  “Do you have him charged with anything?” she said, her voice a touch sharper. “Officially, I mean? Or is he here only for what you’ve said... being found naked in Gorky Park? For knowing who I am? For asking to see me?”

  “Public drunkenness and indecency––”

  “Yet he is clearly not drunk.”

  The ment blinked in surprise. “He would have to be drunk, da?” Staring between her and the man in the iron-barred cage, he scratched his beard with thick fingers. “Are you saying he is crazy, comrade?”

  She motioned towards the man in the cell, ignoring his hands wrapped around her arms. “I am saying he is not drunk. Did you smell alcohol on him?”

  “No, but––”

  “Well, there is not enough on him that you cannot release him to me.” She bit her lip, then lied, again without really knowing why. “...I wish to question him on behalf of the Party. Given the nature of the crime he referenced, there is some political discretion required until we determine his exact involvement.” She glanced at the officer, saw the skepticism in his eyes and decided to ignore it. “...If he is aware of me, and of my case, I need to question him. Alone. Under the auspices of the Party...” she repeated, to emphasize the point. “Not the militsiya.”

  “You want me to release him?” The man still sounded dumbstruck.

  “To the Party, yes.” She made her voice colder and slower, as if she were speaking to a dim-witted child. “Is that a problem, comrade? Of course you may clear it with whomever you must on your end. I will wait.”

  The man looked at her, again blanching at the implied muscle in her words.

  “That is not necessary, comrade Kopovich,” he said, his words crisp. He saluted her, then gave another short bow. “As you say, he is not drunk. He is no longer naked. I see no reason to hold him for this. I will handle the paperwork personally.”

  “Thank you, comrade. I appreciate you not slowing my work.”

  She turned back towards the cell. It occurred to her only then that the gray-eyed man still held her arms in his muscular hands. Looking down at where he gripped her, she glanced up with a frown and once more found herself meeting his gaze.

  “You can let go now, comrade,” she said. “I will take you with me, as you asked.”

  Relief filled his expression. “Thank you, Ilana. Thank you.”

  “You and I will talk, da?” She made her voice cold, harsh with authority. “No more of these games, da? Just truth?”

  The implied threat seemed to go right past him.

  “Of course, Ilana.” He massaged her arms through her coat with his fingers. “Of course. I will tell you whatever you wish. Anything.”

  He sounded so openly relieved that time, she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  Instead she looked down at where he continued to touch her...

  And swallowed, in spite of herself.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMES

  THE TRIP TO see Karkoff would have to wait.

  Unable to think of a better place, Ilana brought him back with her, to her apartment.

  She knew how foolish that was. She did it anyway.

  Now she could only think about the myriad reasons as to why it was foolish.

  For one thing, the man was a giant. Although she looked him over carefully while he remained in that cell and after he caught hold of her through those iron bars, she had somehow managed to miss the sheer size of him. Perhaps it was the way he sat on that cell floor, folded into himself on the cement, shivering, that conveyed a kind of diminishment. Perhaps even after he stood, he still appeared vulnerable to her––so much so that she’d missed something crucial about his actual physical dimensions.

  Whatever the reason, that illusion dropped when the cell door slid open.

  It opened with a pained screech and the man stepped outside his cage and into the cement corridor. He towered over her with broad shoulders and a heavily muscled chest. He had slim hips, long legs and he walked cautiously, almost as if he worried he might break things if he got too close to anything. When she motioned to the officer, clicking her fingers and pointing for him to retrieve the prisoner’s blanket from the cell floor, the gray-eyed man wrapped that natty thing around the giant’s shoulders again, having to reach up with a small hop to do it.

  The blanket no longer made him look small.

  That particular illusion was entirely broken.

  Ilana found herself staring at that chest for a few seconds too long. Hesitating, yes, as she rethought what she was doing and whether it was particularly wise––but if she were being totally honest with herself, that wasn’t the only reason or even the main reason she stared.

  He really was breathtakingly beautiful.

  Anyway, she had a gun.

  “You are sure you would not like an escort, comrade Kopovich?” the police officer said politely, as if noticing her bewilderment at the man’s size.

  He wasn’t wrong in making the offer, so she did not take offense. Her naked vagrant from Gorky Park had to weigh two of her, if not more.

  Even so, she scowled and flushed, feeling caught.

  She yanked her calm veneer back however, and refused the ment’s offer, although it crossed her mind later to wonder why she had refused. For whatever reason, she was determined to take her mystery man alone. Obviously he wanted that too, but Ilana knew his wishes weren’t her only reason for doing it. They weren’t even her main reason for doing it.

  Ilana herself desired to speak to him in private.

  But why?

  Granted, he intrigued her. And yes, he was beautiful. But her wanting to be alone with him didn’t feel sexual. Had he manipulated her with his seeming vulnerability? Why had she taken him outside official channels totally, versus bringing him back to the Party holding cells, as she’d told the militsiya officer she intended? Why had she been so instinctively resistant to the idea of processing him through the Party hierarchy at all?

  At the time, she was forced to admit, she reacted with pure emotion.

  To do so was not like her. At all.

  “I won’t require your assistance, comrade,” she’d said crisply to the ment. “We will be fine together on our own, will we not, my friend?” The last she directed towards gray-eyes, who still looked around with a borderline lost look on his face, like he couldn’t understand where he was, or how he had gotten there.

  When he didn’t look over right away, Ilana cleared her throat.

  “Comrade?” she said politely. “We are not going to have a problem together, are we?”

  His eyes clicked back to meet hers.

  “A problem, Ilana?” Surprise touched his deep voice. “What kind of problem?”

  She flushed slightly at his words, which still sounded so cultured they might be rehearsed. And why did he so insist on calling her only by her first name? Something about that felt overly intimate in some way.

  “You don’t plan to hurt me, do you, comrade?” she said, fighting to inject humor in her words. “To take advantage of my trusting nature? To try and escape me before we can talk?”

  His jaw loosened. He looked positively stunned as he stared. “Hurt you? Of course I would not hurt you. Why would you ask me that, Ilana?”

  He sounded so stricken she fought a smile. “Good, good. It is only a question, comrade. Please take no offense.”

  The man calling hi
mself Raguel glanced around at the cement block row of holding cells. As he did, he made another faint frown, right before he moved closer to where she stood. She watched him, puzzled, as he laid a hand on her shoulder, as if for reassurance.

  Fighting her puzzlement at his seeming familiarity, she glanced back at the bearded officer, her expression flat.

  “You see? We are old friends already,” she said.

  The bearded police officer continued to look between her and the half-dressed man skeptically, but after another glance at Ilana’s face, he only nodded, the scowl barely visible on his lips. Ilana knew he didn’t believe her that they did not know one another––not anymore, if he ever had. Not given how the prisoner acted towards her.

  She no longer cared what he thought, however.

  She was more worried about what she would tell her own people.

  She wondered how she would possibly explain this to Karkoff.

  She briefly considered calling in to Karkoff right then, from the station. Deciding to wait at least until she got back to her apartment and questioned the man on her own first, she turned and began to walk, not bothering to check if the strange man followed.

  He did follow her, though.

  He followed her all the way to her car without speaking.

  He stood there on the freezing cold asphalt with his bare feet, shivering while she unlocked her beat-up, dingy yellow VAZ-2101 sedan, what most Russians called a Zhiguli and what the rest of the world called a Lada. The car used to be gold but the Moscow streets were punishing, leaving it rusted and pock-marked from the harsh weather and smog and with most of its original color faded. It was a common problem in Moscow.

  Glancing down at his feet, she wished she had shoes to give him, but figured for now it was better to get him off the street and warm. Still, it was a good reminder to make him comfortable and clothed before she questioned him in earnest.

  She watched with faint amusement as the tall man folded himself inside her car, somehow making himself small again to get inside. Then she was in the driver’s seat and they were heading to her apartment complex located in a residential bloc a dozen kilometers outside of central Moscow.

  They didn’t talk during the drive.

  Ilana decided she would try and put him at ease first, give him food and coffee and clean clothes––treat him like a regular person and not a caged animal. In her experience that was more likely to yield her useful information than the opposite.

  Besides, he was still shivering so hard his teeth chattered loudly as she drove.

  She cranked up the Zhiguli’s tired heater to full, making herself sweat under her heavy coat, but it didn’t seem to help very much. He was so cold it was making her feel cold. He acted as though the weather was completely foreign to him, like he’d never experienced the end of a Moscow winter before.

  If that were true, he must have been in sheer hell a month ago.

  He was close enough to Uri’s size that she should be able to give him things out of the boxes of personal belongings Uri repeatedly refused to pick up from her place. She knew Uri left his things there on purpose––likely so he’d have an excuse to drop by when she wasn’t expecting it, or an excuse to be angry with her when she eventually threw them out.

  It would serve him right if she gave a few articles to this man.

  She’d always hated that streak of passive-aggression in her ex-husband.

  Ilana found herself looking at the man sitting in the seat next to her as she thought about Uri and his box of clothes. She watched him stare out the windows, his face now holding a tension on the surface. He continued to clutch the ratty blanket around his broad shoulders, but something in his expression really hit at her.

  He looked like a man trying to wake from a bad dream.

  He gazed numbly out at the gray winter landscape like he couldn’t quite take it in––or maybe like he didn’t quite believe it was real. Perhaps he just didn’t want to believe it was real. Whatever the case, he seemed almost in a state of shock about where he was.

  Yet, oddly, he didn’t seem to be at all uncomfortable with her.

  She even got the impression her presence comforted him here, in this world that struck him as so alien. She got the impression he’d wanted to touch her a few times, too. He glanced at her off and on while she drove, at her hands and legs and arms.

  She’d seen him hesitate, as if thinking about it, but he never once reached for her like he had while they were still at the militsiya station.

  She only spoke to him after they’d parked and left the car and were ascending the stairs inside her block-like apartment building. Identifiable by number only, Ilana’s building stood inside a massive complex of identical-looking cement block buildings that stretched further than the eye could see.

  At the end of winter, like now, everything inside and outside of those buildings appeared gray and white and black. The one exception might be clothes hanging on lines, whipping dry in the cold wind tunneling between buildings and providing sharp bits of color.

  “So can you tell me your real name now?” She said it casually as she ascended the stairs, separating her house key from the rest of the keys on her keyring. She didn’t look at him.

  “Raguel,” he said.

  She glanced back, in spite of herself. “I said your real name, comrade.”

  When he didn’t speak, she prodded him again.

  “Where did you hear this name? How did you know about Raguel?”

  He met her gaze as she looked down at him that time, both of them still climbing the stairs. Ilana had her keys and the files clutched awkwardly between her arms and hands and fingers but didn’t slow her steps in her heeled leather boots. His gray eyes seemed to shine faintly, even in the darkness of the narrow stairwell as he followed her up.

  “I first heard it when I was born,” he said simply. “It is my name.”

  Ilana frowned, but didn’t answer. Shaking off the dozen or so questions that rose at his odd speech, she settled on the most immediate one.

  “Why would you not give this name to them, if it is your real name?” she said. “Why not the other militsiya? Why give it only to me?”

  “You are not militsiya,” he said.

  She tensed, but kept it off her face. “Yes,” she said only. “Is that why?”

  He didn’t answer. Not at first.

  When she didn’t break the quiet, he sighed.

  “I knew the name would have no meaning to them,” he said. “None that was relevant.”

  Ilana frowned, still walking in her high-heeled boots. “But you give it to me? Why?”

  “The meaning for you would be relevant.” He paused, then exhaled again, as if in defeat. “This will sound calculating, because it is. I hoped that telling you would help you understand why I needed to speak to you. Additionally, I hoped it would help you find me credible. I thought it more likely to save time, to convince you I was telling the truth about knowing who Golunsky is. Which I will do once we are inside closed doors and able to speak in more detail.”

  She smiled in spite of herself, shaking her head. “All right.” Still thinking, she glanced back at him again. “What is your last name, Raguel?”

  “I do not have one.”

  She stopped dead that time, on the landing of her floor.

  “You don’t have one.” She watched as he descended the last few steps to reach her side. “What does that mean?”

  For the first time, he gave her a faint smile, tinged with wry humor. She couldn’t help noticing how different his face looked when his lips curved.

  “I told you,” he said. “My name is not particularly helpful. Not here. Not in your world. You had a relevant context for it, so I gave it to you. I am being transparent about my motives, Ilana. I desire for you to find me credible. If I did not have those motives and you had not had that context, I would have given you a different name.”

  “A different name?” Her voice sharpened more. “Like what? What n
ame would you give?”

  He shrugged. “I would have chosen one appropriate to this time and this place. I would have given you a name solely so that you would have something to call me. I know how important names are to people in this world.”

  “My world?” she said. “This world? You’ve said that twice now.” Her frown grew more genuine, as did her concern. “What ‘world’ would that be, Comrade?”

  That time, he didn’t answer at all.

  He simply watched her face, his gray eyes faintly glowing.

  Deciding to let it go for now, she turned from him to walk down her floor’s corridor, past a row of numbered, green-painted doors. She stopped when she reached her own. Inserting the key into the lock, it struck her again how foolhardy this was, to not only let a complete stranger know where she lived but to bring him willingly into her home. Even with her training, her superiors would not approve of this, not without knowing why she had done it.

  Karkoff would not approve.

  He trusted her, however.

  All of this ran through her mind even as she swung open the door on her modest apartment and led him inside. Raguel followed cautiously, again looking around as if afraid he might break something or knock something over by his very presence.

  Her apartment was reasonably clean, so that was a bonus.

  Opening the curtains to let in the cool winter sunlight, she turned on the gas heater first, still conscious of her guest’s discomfort. She motioned for him to sit on the flower-patterned couch in her main living room while she hung up her coat and turned on the kitchen light, exposing her lime green refrigerator and porcelain sink near the center cutting board.

  She brought him the box of clothes first, pulling out articles to show him until he’d found a few he seemed to approve of, or at least did not actively disapprove of. Given that he still shivered like he couldn’t get his body under control, even on her couch with her heater blasting, it didn’t surprise her that he focused on warmth––taking dark wool pants, a thick thermal shirt and an even heavier sweater out of the pile of Uri’s more casual, off-work clothes.

  When he’d finished picking out articles, she brought him to her bathroom and showed him how to work the hot water and the shower. He acted as though he’d never used one of those before either, but he seemed to get the hang of the thing quickly. Once she got the water hot out of the rattling heater, she saw understanding hit him for real.