“See? You are entertaining me already. Keep it up! Sweet little Margarita, for that kind of entertainment I have enough girls who still have their whole faces pretty. No offense. You’ll entertain me by just being as you are. I find you kind of funny, you see? Now—the second part on your side of the deal will be entertaining for you as well, I assure you.”
“And what would that be?”
“Don’t worry, it should be barely challenging for someone with your abilities, Margarita,” Sultan says with a charming smile. “Or should I call you—but no. Until you’re with me your name will be Margarita. It’s just one part of keeping you away from my partner and his bloodhounds. Besides, who knows—maybe you’re looking for your Master in the Zone, yes?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t. Never mind, Margarita, never mind!” Sultan laughs so much that he has to wipe a tear from his eye. “So—I’ll help you with getting into the Exclusion Zone, whatever you are up to there. In exchange, once you’re finished with your own business or just had enough of crawling in radioactive mud, you will travel to the New Zone and whack someone.”
Nooria gives Sultan a puzzled look.
“Whack? What?”
“Kill. Him.”
“You are wrong about me. I am not a killer. I only hurt bad people and only when I have to.”
“How entertaining you are, my innocent little Margarita,” Sultan says, smiling even wider.
“Why kill? Did he do something bad to you?”
“Listen up, docha. I can’t get to the person who screwed my Skadovsk scheme because that would upset his boss. There’s nothing good in losing a valuable partner, whether I like him or not. But I, or more specifically you can deal that bastard a sting where it will hurt a lot. An eye for an eye, a friend for a friend, and I lost more than one friend to that bastard’s hands. Luckily, even bastards have some emotions left and that’s his weak spot where your blade comes in—literally. It’s all tit for tat, you see?”
“If I agree, how will I get to New Zone?”
“You’ll need to talk to a friend of mine called Jack once you’re ready to go. You will find him in the Container Warehouse south of Yanov Station. Once in the New Zone, you will kill the troublemaker. However, in case you think about trying to disappear without coming up with your part of the deal—see, I could threaten to hunt you down, delivering you to the people looking for you or just kill you myself but come on, we’re friends, no? I have my honor and you seem to be an honorable person as well. Aren’t you?”
“I—I don’t know—I mean yes, I do have honor.”
“Good. I give you my word of honor to bring you to the Zone and you will entertain me and perform that little task. Do you give me your word of honor?”
Nooria hesitates.
“Poor little girl, you look wasted,” Sultan says. “After all you must’ve had hell of a bad day. So, once more—do I have your word of honor that you’ll whack that man, in exchange for me letting Knuckles just drive by that grey building instead of stopping and delivering you to the SBU?”
The Hummer suddenly slows down, almost coming to a halt in front of the building from where she had escaped a few hours before. It appears now like an ants’ nest stirred up — a cohort of heavily armed commandos is lined up in front of it, while plainclothes agents hurry in and out. Two ambulance cars are standing next to the entrance with their flashing blue lights on. Paramedics are about to put a stretcher with a body inside one of them. One commando, apparently becoming aware of the sinister Hummer, waves to two others. Together, they start walking towards Sultan’s car.
Frightened, Nooria quickly pulls the hood over her face.
“Do we have a deal, little one?”
Sultan doesn’t sound jovial now. Realizing that she is trapped, both in the net of the slick gangster’s words and his car that holds her like a mobile prison cell, Nooria heaves a resigned sigh. Sadly, she bows her head to Sultan.
“You have my word of honor,” she quietly says with submission in her voice. “How will I find troublemaker?”
“That’s my little Margarita!”
Sultan rubs his hands in satisfaction and puts his charming smile back on. The Humvee accelerates and quickly drives away. In a minute, they turn off from Volodymyrska Street but Nooria still doesn’t dare looking outside.
“Relax, Margarita. Tomorrow evening you will be in the Zone. Sultan always keeps his word and I trust you will keep yours as well. Once you make it to the New Zone with Jack’s help, start asking around in Bagram. You could also do a little research while you’re in the Exclusion Zone. Just in case, you know.”
“Does this man have a name?”
“He’s probably not using his old call sign anymore,” Sultan replies lighting up another cigarette. “But his real name should also ring a bell in some heads. It’s Tarasov. Mikhailo Tarasov. Yes, Margarita! Once Degtyarev learns about his old buddy’s death he will look as devastated as you do now. Boo-hoo, the bastard might even cry—hey, but you don’t have to! Take this napkin, here. Come on, pull yourself together! We’ve almost arrived!”
50
Sultan’s residence, Kiev
They drive southwards on Klovskiy Street, leaving behind the high-rise apartment blocks and office buildings of Kiev’s downtown. Taking a turn from the avenue that follows the right bank of the Dnieper River, Knuckles drives into a quiet residential area with neat-looking family houses. They appear to Nooria like smaller versions of the houses she had seen in the suburbs of Los Angeles, though these are secluded from the street by high fences and high-grown bushes hide most of them from the outsiders’ view.
The building in front of which the Hummer finally slows down lacks any of this seclusion. Where a garden would be, there is a parking lot and the house boasts a flashing electric sign that reads TAHITI SAUNA CLUB.
Slowly, Knuckles drives into a narrow lane leading to a black metal gate that slowly opens on their approach. From the backside, the house would look like the home of a decent family but the wall around the backyard garden is topped by CCTV cameras. The windows have grills, nicely forged but nonetheless placed there to keep anyone outside—or rather inside, an icy feeling in her guts tells Nooria when Sultan gallantly opens the door and helps her out of the car.
“You could use some rest,” Sultan says. “Do you want to stay for a few days?”
“No,” Nooria says a bit more decisively than what would be necessary. “Sorry. I thank you for your hospitality, but I want to get to Zone as soon as possible.”
“A reliable man will drive you tomorrow to a spot where you can easily enter the Zone. Until then, if you feel lonely there are some ladies living here who can give you company.”
When Knuckles opens the heavy safety door and they enter, the lights go up without Sultan touching anything. He notices Nooria's surprise with a satisfied smile.
“When I was a kid, I had to write my homework by a petroleum lamp. I came a long way Margarita… we all did.”
The interior of the house is spacious but appears surprisingly spartan for a man of Sultan’s standing.
“You could definitely ask my ladies to share some of their dresses with you,” Sultan says as he takes Nooria’s coat and sees the light fatigue she wears. “But what do I say—on second thought, I’ll see if I can get you something more suitable for the Zone.”
“My coat is enough,” Nooria says.
“Size will be a problem,” Knuckles says ignoring her words and looking Nooria up and down. “She’d fit twice into the smallest Kevlar jacket we have.”
“Have it arranged, I don’t care how,” Sultan snarls at his bodyguard. Then he asks Nooria in his polite tone: “Are you sure you want to leave tomorrow? I’ll fly to Minsk and my local partners are even worse than those in Kiev. I’d appreciate if you cheered me up there, Margarita. Those greedy Belarus bastards always make me nervous.”
“I want Zone.”
Sultan smiles but
keeps pushing her. “You would enjoy going to the Zone with me. Just in a couple of days. You see, I love my car but there’s a much more comfortable way to get there. Unfortunately, that still needs to be arranged. That’s why I need to talk to my partners in Minsk.”
“I want tomorrow.”
“All right,” Sultan sighs and turns back to Knuckles. “Ah, neterperlivaya suchka. Show her to one of the rooms upstairs. Good night, Margarita. I hope we shall meet again!”
Knuckles leads Nooria up a wooden staircase into a corridor from where a few doors open. The noise of a TV comes from one of the rooms behind as they walk down the corridor. Another door is ajar and Nooria feels the smell of freshly washed laundry mixed with sweet perfume. Knuckles opens the last door and ushers her into a small room with only a bed, a cupboard and a make-up table for furniture. The small window is barred on the outside.
“Sauna and jacuzzi are on the first floor,” Knuckles says putting the key to the door into his pocket. “Or ground floor or whatever tsokolny etazh is in English. First door to the right where we came in. Kitchen too. You will be picked up at five tomorrow morning. Good night.”
“Good night.”
“Don’t forget—you can’t go out of here!”
Knuckles’ malicious words already come from the corridor. Nooria looks around in the room, hesitating between the tiredness that makes her want to lay to sleep right away and her desire to take a proper bath at last. She opens the cupboard where she finds a set of towels, a white bath robe and a half-full tube of shower gel. Nooria takes them and makes her way back to the ground floor. Although she has no idea what a jacuzzi is, she hopes it’s a kind of shower.
The door where Knuckles directed her to leads to a large bathroom. To Nooria’s surprise, she finds not one but five showers and a variety of beauty products on the dark wooden shelf under a huge, brightly lit mirror. The bathroom is spotlessly clean and the pleasant smell of steam perfumed with pine wood scent emanates from somewhere. Suddenly she feels very dirty. Nooria quickly gets out of her clothes, and then lets the invigoratingly hot shower wash away the grit of the past days.
Stepping out of the steaming shower cabin and donning the bath robe, she is about to clean her socks and underwear in the basin when a door opens and a very young woman appears. She wears the same robe like Nooria and has a towel rolled around her head. Nonchalantly, a cigarette hangs on her full lips. She looks at Nooria in surprise, who quickly hides her scar with her wet hair.
“Novaya ty?” the young woman asks and exhales the smoke. “Te vagy az uj lany?”
“Sorry but I don’t speak your language,” Nooria replies and glances over to her clothes. To her relief her blade, that she wouldn’t take a step without, is hidden from sight under her jeans.
“Oh sorry,” the other woman says with a giggle. The rolled Rs give her English a very hard accent. “I thought you were Hungarian like me. You look a bit like a gypsy, you know? I’m no gypsy, thanks God, but Sultan wants me to play one so I play a gypsy. The clients love it.”
“A—gypsy?”
“Where are you from?”
“From—the south,” Nooria cautiously replies, “and my name is—Margarita.”
“Welcome. I’m Lili.”
The woman called Lili measures her up and down and draws on her cigarette once more. The bitter scent of cigarette smoke spoils the clean atmosphere of the bathroom. Although apparently trying to appear cheerful, her gestures imply nervousness.
“Aha persze,” Lili skeptically says. “Whatever.” She looks into the mirror and moistening a finger with her tongue, removes a lash from under her eye. “Come, let me introduce you to the other girls.”
“I am washing my clothes.”
Lili laughs. “Why? We have a washing machine!”
“But I—”
It is only now, looking at the mirror, that Lili notices the scar on Nooria’s face. For a moment she says nothing, then laughs again.
“I see you tried to rebel once,” she says, killing the cigarette butt in the sink. “No need for that here. This place is not so bad… it’s quite okay, actually.”
She leads Nooria through the door where three other women relax in a jacuzzi. The room looks plain, though, with plastic chairs and tables arranged around the pool and a green tube lying on the tiled floor like a thin, long snake. Paper boxes line the wall, all filled with heaps of empty bottles.
“Vot novaya,” Lili tells the girls as they enter. “The black haired sweetheart is Irina. That with the round face, she is Nastya, and the blonde one is Larissa. Come… but not like that. Take off that robe.”
The girls notice Nooria’s embarrassment with giggles. Larissa is the only one who remains quiet and studies Nooria’s face with curiosity. Without any excuse for not doing as asked, Nooria takes off her robe. With a female instinct, she knows that the four twenty-somethings not only study her body with eager eyes but also compare it to theirs, and the envy she sees on Nastya’s face doesn’t comfort her at all. Quickly, she steps into the pool and hides her nakedness under the water sitting next to Larissa. The pool is small and the closeness to another naked female body makes her embarrassment grow even further, although the blonde girl avoids touching her.
For a few minutes, the girls are silent. Nooria studies her faces: they are not the gorgeous female predators of the Shooter variety but still pretty, each in her own way of being a girl from the neighborhood. Black haired Irina appears the smartest of them until she sniffs on her nose in a disgusting manner, telling of her being pretty but lacking sophistication. Nastya has something written on her face that makes Nooria feel uneasy, despite the girl smiling at her. Larissa avoids any eye contact with her and only speaks up when Lili asks her a direct question.
“Didn’t you learn English, Larissa? Margarita doesn’t speak Russian. You’ll have to entertain her.”
“Is that so?” Larissa replies. Her voice sounds tired.
“Would you remove your hair from your face, please?” Lili asks Nooria.
Reluctantly, Nooria removes the strand of hair covering her scar. She feels worse as if she had to stand up in the middle, turn around and present herself to the critical female eyes once more. The girls say nothing, only Nastya’s fading smile tells of repugnance.
“Baystrukhi,” Larissa finally says and continues in English. “The man doing this to a girl should have his balls cut off and be killed!”
“Vsyo,” Nastya says and stays, revealing an overweight body with breasts big like melons. Forgetting about any decency, Nooria stares at her milky white skin.
“Poka, kofe s molkam,” Nastya tells Nooria with a strange smile. “Idu spat.”
“She likes you,” Larissa whispers. Unsure about this means good or bad, Nooria turns her eyes away from the plump girl.
“She also called you milk and coffee. Probably because of your skin color, my gypsy friend,” Lili says. While she speaks, her lips reveals teeth yellowed from nicotine. “You two have fun. We go to sleep. Just to remind you—work starts at ten in the morning!”
A sudden desire of getting out of the pool and running into the relative seclusion of her rooms comes to Nooria, but she feels Larissa patting her thigh in a friendly and reassuring way. With the pool now empty, the blonde slides farther from Nooria and watches the other girls leave. She stretches out in the water.
“At last Lili is gone,” Larissa says. “One cannot talk in her presence. She tells the boss everything we say.”
“What is this place?” Nooria asks her the question that was bothering her since she arrived with Sultan.
Larissa looks at her with eyes wide open. “You come from the moon, tsiganka?”
“I don’t know what this place is.”
“Gospodi…”
Gospodi. Tarasov’s pet cuss comes to Nooria’s mind with the impact of a sledgehammer. Suddenly, her strength leaves her. She buries her face into her hands, sobbing, with all the torment she had been through in the past two days ov
ercoming her.
Larissa moves back to her and comfortingly puts her arm around Nooria’s neck.
“Come on, it’s not so bad here,” she says caressing Nooria’s head in a sisterly fashion. “Money is good and Sultan is not a bad boss.”
“He wants me to kill my man,” Nooria says crying. “I gave him my word of honor. I must do it. I—I don’t know what to do.”
“Was he bad to you?”
“Who?”
“Your husband or boyfriend or whoever you mean.”
“No. He is the best man in the world and now he is—”
“Heard that before,” Larissa says with a skeptical expression on her pretty, round face. “Let’s chat! I have some pertsovka in my room and a little anasha too, but Knuckles must not know that.”
“Wh—what is pertsovka?”
“Vodka with honey and pepper. You look like you could use a drink or two.”
“And anasha?”
“Something you could use even more. Come, let’s go… it’s almost midnight and we’re not supposed to use the Jacuzzi so long. Davai!”
Slipping into her bath robe and grabbing her clothes, Nooria lets Larissa drag her up the stairs by her hand, staring at the thick, wet pigtail reaching down to the blonde girl’s waist. Then she finds herself in the room from where the pleasant smell of fresh laundry had emanated when she arrived. Larissa lights up a candle and puts it on the table.
“Have a seat,” Larissa says taking a hairdryer from her cupboard. ”Will you help me dry my hair?”
“You have very beautiful hair, Larissa,” Nooria says while combing the girl’s long hair with her fingers in the warm jet of the hairdryer. “It has color of honey.”
“You want to know my secret recipe? I wash it with kvas twice a week. You know what kvas is?”
“Yes. It is like beer.”
Larissa leans over to the make-up table and takes a box of cigarettes that is lying there among a host of cosmetics. Using her long polished fingernails she opens a cigarette, puts the tobacco into a thin paper taken from a small blue pouch and adds something to it. Although Nooria can’t see it clearly, she immediately recognizes the scent.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Northern Passage s-2 Page 33