37 Hours

by J. F. Kirwan

  As her eyes became accustomed to the dim lighting, Bransk walked to the end of the short corridor, up a few steps, then through another door. She’d expected him to tell her off, that she’d nearly gotten them both killed. Or to have knocked her into the train’s pathway. Evidently the strong and silent type. But she still didn’t trust him, and wished Katya hadn’t either. She wondered if Katya was still alive.

  In the small, windowless room were two familiar faces, seated on the opposite side of a square metal table. Behind her, rows of video screens showed views from inside the airport and the subway system. The young colonel in his khaki peaked military cap with its red band, hammer-and-anvil star and gold braiding – all the trimmings – sat close to his aide. Her eyes flicked once to Nadia then back to the table in front of her. The colonel drummed his fingers on a sheaf of papers.

  ‘You like cutting it fine, don’t you?’ he said.

  Nadia said nothing.

  ‘Sit,’ he said. ‘This is all we have on Salamander.’ He pushed it across the table to her. She sat down. Bransk leaned against the wall, next to the only way in and out.

  ‘It’s a waste of paper,’ the colonel said. ‘Nothing useful whatsoever. No name, no physical description, no next of kin, no fingerprints, no profile.’

  She leafed through the thirty or so pages, some yellowed with age. He was right.

  ‘So, let me recap,’ he said. He took off his hat, placed it in front of his aide, and raked his fingers through thick blond hair he’d clearly gelled earlier, presumably for his aide’s benefit. His aide didn’t flinch, even when the colonel’s left hand briefly dipped out of sight, presumably to touch her thigh under the table.

  ‘We are missing a nuclear warhead, a submarine commander, and your sister. Pay attention to the implied priority.’

  ‘Wait a minute. Sergei is also missing?’

  Bransk spoke, gave her a measuring stare. ‘You didn’t know?’

  The colonel sighed, then continued. ‘I sent him to pick up your sister, for her own safety.’

  Nadia recalled that her father had also sent someone to pick up Katya. Sergei must have gotten there first, and then he and Katya had been taken prisoner. She stared at the colonel, surprised he’d done this. It didn’t seem to be in his nature.

  ‘Don’t thank me,’ the colonel said. ‘It wasn’t my idea.’ His eyes flicked sideways to his aide. Nadia caught her eye, and nodded a silent thank you, for at least trying to protect Katya.

  He took the sheaf of papers back from her and passed them to his aide, who deposited them into a leather briefcase with a combination lock.

  He planted his elbows on the table, leaned forwards, and took a breath. ‘My head is on the block. The only reason I have not been arrested is because my superior will then have nobody to blame when he comes under the spotlight, which will be very shortly.’

  Nadia needed to contact her father, update him with the news about Sergei. She’d prefer to work with him alone, and get as far from the colonel and Bransk as possible. She leaned back and folded her arms.

  ‘What makes you think I can help?’

  He glared at her a few seconds, then sat back, folded his arms, mirroring her, and snapped the finger and thumb of his right hand.

  His aide placed a small, black ellipsoid phone on the table.

  ‘Touch it with your thumb,’ the colonel instructed.

  She stared at it a moment, like it was a sleeping rodent. One with fangs. She reached out and did as instructed, then removed her hand. It rang. Again, she stared at it. How could it be anything but bad news?

  ‘It’s for you,’ the colonel said, disdain in his voice.

  She let it ring. She was tired of playing other people’s games.

  The colonel sighed again, then pulled out a matt black PSM – a short, stubby pistol, quite old, still issued to high-ranking officials – and levelled it at her chest. ‘Answer it or you are no use to me. Why do you think we are meeting here? Perhaps the cleaners can earn some overtime, so this wasn’t a total waste of time for everybody.’

  She met his eyes, waited another three rings, by which time a normal phone would have clicked to a mailbox; then she picked it up and accepted the call. She held it to her right ear and listened. Breathing. Smooth, calm, collected.

  ‘Nadia,’ the caller said, as if they knew each other. His voice was gravelly, harsh Russian, like breaking rocks, with something else blended into the accent. Somehow she knew it was him. Salamander.

  ‘Yes,’ she replied.

  ‘Count down from ten, in twos.’

  She obliged. Probably he was using voice-recognition software. After all, the colonel could simply have used her thumb, whether still attached to her body or not, and had his aide take the call.

  Salamander spoke. ‘Your father for Katya. The day after tomorrow. Sunset. A one-time offer.’ There was a pause. Someone in the background. Female. A cry, then a stream of Russian profanities – her sister’s favourites – cut off by a knock, hard flesh striking softer flesh. Nadia closed her eyes a second.

  Katya’s alive.

  Salamander read out a sequence of letters. ‘TCHRBMK4.’ The line went dead. She held the phone a little longer, then it began to get hot. Very hot. She threw it towards a metal bin in the corner of the room. Bransk intercepted it – nice catch – then dropped it like the proverbial hot brick it was, and sent it on its journey. As it rattled to the bottom of the bin, bright orange flames burst upwards, then flickered and died. She turned back to the colonel. The gun was still pointed at her.

  ‘Well?’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ she answered.

  He pushed the gun forward until the business end of the barrel touched her sternum.

  She cleared her throat. ‘He wants to trade Katya for my father.’

  The colonel waved his free hand dismissively, his mouth twisting into a smirk, a trace of bitterness underneath.

  ‘Your father is dead.’

  Definitely something ugly in his tone. Again, as if he’d known her father. Impossible. Too young.

  The colonel’s brow widened as he realised she wasn’t lying. He sat back, momentarily looking lost. He swallowed, pursed and unpursed his lips. His face flushed red. Without warning he hammered the pistol butt once on the table, letting a sharp ring reverberate around the room.

  Nadia wondered what was going on. He stood up fast, his chair clattering against the wall. He aimed the weapon straight down at her forehead. Rage flared in his eyes, no longer boyish, and she recognised something. He had killed before. In cold blood.

  ‘Where – is – he?’ he said, barely controlling his voice.

  Neither the lieutenant nor Bransk moved, but both of them tensed, ready for anything.

  ‘The message said –’

  She flinched as the shot rang out close to her ears, deafening at such close range, glass exploding behind her as a video screen sputtered and died. Her heart rate spiked.

  ‘YOUR FATHER!’ he screamed at her. ‘WHERE IS HE?’

  She looked up at him, thought about saying ‘I don’t know’, which was true, but not wise right now.

  ‘He was on the plane with me.’

  The colonel yelled several expletives then unloaded four more bullets into the screens behind her. The ringing in her ears was like a high speed train, her breathing scratchy. She watched as if in slow motion, as he raised back his arm, the one holding the pistol about to become a hammer, and then swung it down towards her jaw. She didn’t move, even though it would shatter her cheekbone for sure.

  Better than a bullet in the head.

  The gun stopped right next to her face. Nadia closed her eyes, clenched and unclenched her hands, her palms slick with sweat, itching to hold her own pistol and turn this around.

  The colonel bellowed at Bransk. ‘You lose her, you spend the rest of your sorry life in Siberia.’ He stormed around the table and left the room. The lieutenant grabbed the
colonel’s military cap and her briefcase, and scuttled after her boss.

  Bransk stayed where he was. She recovered a little, tried to catch up with events. Salamander had Katya, probably Sergei too if he wasn’t already dead. He wanted her father, presumably to punish him for his betrayal, and because he knew too much. And Bransk might still be working for Salamander. But he was the only one left in the room, and she had to know what the hell was going on.

  ‘What just happened?’ she asked, not looking at him.

  ‘Your father killed his father.’

  It was like another gunshot, the words ricocheting against the walls of her mind. The Politburo member. That’s how the colonel had advanced so quickly. A maverick, but a favoured one.

  Her father should have warned her.

  Bransk added some colour. ‘Your father wanted the man to suffer, like those men who had died in the mine collapse. The boy too – like all the children who’d held a vigil at the mine – waiting for the rescue attempt that came too late. So he killed the wife, a single shot to the head, then tied up the son and made him watch while he buried the boy’s father alive. He made sure the man could see his son, hear his screams and sobs until the very end.’

  Nadia chewed on a finger. She felt like someone had just kicked her in the stomach. ‘You didn’t have to tell me that.’

  For the first time since she’d met him, Bransk’s voice lost its steel, and softened a fraction. ‘Yes I did.’

  After a while, he asked her the question she’d been asking herself for a while. ‘Where and when does the trade take place?’

  ‘Two days. Sunset.’ That was the easy part. But she had just worked out the second part. RBMK. Reaktor Bolshoy Moshchnosti Kanalniy. Russia’s unique graphite-moderated, boiling water reactor design. And the TCH. Well, that was obvious. She turned to Bransk.

  ‘Chernobyl,’ she said. ‘Unit 4.’

  She watched his reaction. She’d been sure he worked for Salamander. But she could read people pretty well. People could be good at masking a lie, because they could prepare, lock down their reactions. Feigning surprise was harder. The pupils of the eyes dilated. Not so easy to fake. She watched Bransk closely, and there it was. He hadn’t known. Could mean something, could mean nothing.

  ‘We’d better get going,’ she said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Nadia skulked in the long shadows cast by a blood-red setting sun, the chill early evening breeze raising goosebumps on her forearms. She left Gorky Park as instructed, taking the exit by the funfair, and crossed the Moskva via Krimskiy Bridge. She wound her way along the northern bank, opposite the National Museum, the sculpture park and the National Theatre, past the Cathedral and the main road leading to Red Square and Lenin’s tomb, whereupon the traffic noise finally died down. She continued for another hour until reaching a widening esplanade backed by a sloping ridge lined with bushes and trees.

  Despite the relative quietude, the view of greenery behind and the ever-moving silver river in front, it wasn’t a pleasant place to be. Tramps permanently camped here, with a sprawling array of stinking bedrolls and filthy plastic bags carrying who-cared-what. The clinking of bottles, mixed with painfully hoarse voices engaged in caustic, bitching banter. Endless tales of how the world had screwed them over, senseless plans of how to put the world back to rights, interspersed with encouraging but trite, drawling aphorisms from equally fallen and drunken colleagues.

  Funny, Nadia thought: if you cleaned up these tramps, put them in black suits, gave them elocution lessons and swapped rock-bottom beer for Remy Martin brandy, it could almost be a government session at the Duma.

  The sun dipped below the treeline, the turgid waters oily in the failing light. Where was he? He said he’d be here half an hour ago. But he’d be cautious. Despite six location changes, for sure she was still being tailed, whether by Bransk, the colonel, or both. Who could she trust? No one. And Katya was being held hostage again. That gnawed at her stomach. She couldn’t believe they were back there again, Katya hostage…

  She recalled happier times with her sister in Moscow, the occasional lavish parties, albeit with Katya’s then gangster boss/lover Kadinsky, who’d trapped Nadia into working for him, and trained her to kill. She mentally backed up. There had been good times, when she and Katya had gotten the weekend off, and had gone window-shopping, always ending with ice cream or swan-feeding in Gorky Park, and sometimes a walk along the banks of the river.

  All Katya had ever wanted was a good life: fine wine, dancing, and a handsome man on her arm. All Nadia had wanted was Katya’s company, to see and hear her laugh, because when Katya laughed the world wasn’t such a bad place to be. She needed to rescue Katya, then take her away. Forget the nuke. Screw Salamander. Someone else could sort it out. She could contact Jake later; maybe he could join them. Recalling Jake’s wounds, she felt a chill. It was a fantasy. Fairy tale stuff. Not her destiny. She worried it wasn’t Katya’s either.

  Bransk had said he’d make travel arrangements then contact her. But he was already cutting it close. She’d need to hit the road soon, get on the midnight train heading eastwards to the Ukraine, to Chernobyl. Where was her father?

  One of the tramps’ voices caught her attention. It was familiar. She didn’t turn around. Instead she fixed her eyes on two geese settling down noisily on the water. She put one hand behind her in a fist, while the other shaded her eyes as if she was trying to see someone on the opposite shore.

  ‘They took me one morning, fucking army, dragged me away right in front of my daughter. There’s one I ain’t seen in years. Don’t know where she’s at now.’

  Behind her back, Nadia stuck out her forefinger from her fist. Yes. You’re on the right track.

  ‘I think they’re holding her somewhere, them dirty motherfuckers –’

  Pinky finger. No.

  ‘Them snakes,’ he added.

  Forefinger. Yes. Salamander. She knew he already knew this. She presumed he was establishing that she remembered the code he’d taught her when they hunted. Last time they’d used it she’d been twelve, and they’d been on the trail of a large brown bear.

  One or two of the others joined in with bland acknowledgements, another with complete gibberish.

  ‘I reckon I could find her, you know. If I put my mind to it. In, I don’t know…’

  She held two fingers out, as she lowered her other hand and glanced both ways along the Moskva, as if searching, getting impatient. A party of early-evening revellers headed her way. Young. Acting drunk. Acting.

  ‘Two days or so. If only I knew where she was. A man can get anywhere in that time these days.’

  She began the code pattern he’d taught her when she was twelve, spelling letters one at a time. T-C-H.

  ‘Of course, maybe she’s held in a place right out in the open, where nobody wants to go.’

  Forefinger.

  She looked at the group. Three men and a girl. One of the men was wearing a hoodie, so she couldn’t see his face. She stomped her feet twice, as if to stave off the cold air.

  Danger.

  She needed to make a distraction so her father could get away. Walk towards the group, or away? If she walked towards them and he ran, she could slow them down. She turned their way just as two things happened. The first was the hooded man. He flicked off his hood and looked directly at her, and even in the distance she recognised that boyish face with pale, tortured eyes. The colonel.

  The second was a pinprick in her neck arriving at the same moment as a pfft sound. Her hand went uselessly to the telltale feather of a tranquiliser dart. She stood, transfixed, wavering. Clever. She was going to fall onto the worn cobblestones. They were waiting to see which of the tramps reacted, either dashing out to catch her or break her fall, or just flinching, knowing he could not risk moving to save her.

  She tottered, tried to bend her knees so she would collapse vertically rather than like a plank falling sideways. But she co
uldn’t feel her legs, or pretty much anything below her neck. There was no stopping this. She was going to fall.

  Don’t catch me! Stay put. Don’t react. They’ll kill you. He will kill you, right here on these cobbles.

  The world around her began to sway, at first in a small circle, and then it pitched upwards and she saw dark blue sky. Her inner ears and her brain screamed at her to use her arms to break her fall. But the dart blocked any communication to her limbs, as if her spinal cord had been severed. She was going to hit the deck hard, smash her skull open, and bleed out. This was it. She could feel those hard shiny stones racing towards her, a carpet of hammers. She saw Katya’s sweet face with her dancing eyes, and she surrendered to the inevitable. Death was going to take her.

  She heard a rush, glass bottles clattering across the stones, and something underneath her. All she saw was sky, and then a face, her father’s face, as it had been before. Was she hallucinating? But she wasn’t dead. He’d caught her. He’d saved her. Traded his life for hers. And like any child who’d been deserted by a parent, the only thing that mattered cut through her like an emotional scythe, the thing she wanted to know above all else but would never ask.

  He cared.

  But now he would die. Boots pounded the cobbles, running fast, sprinting, and she imagined pistols being drawn. No, just one, the colonel’s. He would claim the kill. No tears came, but she gazed up at her father, and realised her mouth still worked, and so with all her energy she shouted, screamed a single word at him.

  ‘RUN!’

  He did.

  The ground shook three seconds later when the group rumbled past her, one of them leaping over her head, which she couldn’t turn. Her father wasn’t going to make it. They were young, fast, and he had nowhere to go. Even if he plunged into the Moskva they would follow. Her father was a dead man.

  The sky darkened further as grim, bloated-by-alcohol faces loomed into view, staring down at her. She was defenceless. They studied her as if they’d found something shiny in the dirt. One reached down to touch her cheek. Inside she flinched, but outwardly nothing happened.