by K. T. Tomb
“Is this the north warehouse?” Thyri said.
“Well, it is the most northerly of the five warehouses on this site. They’re used to house the smaller excavators and other equipment at the moment, before work begins properly in a few weeks. About a mile to the east, there is a harbor; that’s where the container came ashore. We should move quickly; I told the guard I was here at the request of Mr. Zeitsev. It may go badly for us if he checks up on that. He probably won’t due to the late hour,” Bianca said, as she pulled on her hat and opened the door of her truck.
Travis and Fiona followed suit, and stepped into the frozen air next to the concrete warehouse wall. There was a heavy steel door that led into the building, with rubber seals that were clearly an attempt to prevent too much icing. As it was, the door had been affixed to the hinges quite poorly so the rubber barely connected with the metal door frame at all in some places, but it had been secured with a heavy steel padlock through the simple bolt. The padlock lay on the ground; the locking mechanism had been forced by a crowbar. Simple, direct and effective. Very much a Fiona-type maneuver. Thyri was fumbling in her pocket, hampered by thick gloves. She produced a slim Maglite flashlight and without further preamble entered the warehouse. Travis and Bianca followed a little more cautiously, shutting the door behind them which despite their best efforts still clanged, metal on metal. Everybody winced, but it appeared they remained undiscovered. The darkness of the warehouse was lit only by the scant glow from the lighting outside that seeped in through high windows of thick toughened glass. They took cover behind a four-wheeled digger with a bucket on a crane attachment.
“Don’t touch the metal, it’s freezing. Keep your gloves on at all times, or you’ll regret it,” Bianca said, sternly.
Travis had absolutely no intention of taking any of his warm clothes off. The wind chill was no longer a factor, but you could still store raw meat in this place without it thawing.
“Where’s Fiona? We need to get her in the car and get out of here.”
Thyri’s eyes were streaming with the cold.
“Hell, call out to her,” Travis said.
“Do you think I should?” Thyri asked.
Their voices were a hushed whisper, breath freezing in miniature clouds.
“Thyri, if anyone other than Fiona is hiding here, they’re madder than she is. Wait, what’s that noise?”
Travis’ last words were a hiss. Outside in the night, there was an oscillating whirr of sound. A helicopter, Travis guessed, which could not mean anything good. He now knew the reason the mine was lit so brightly, so inefficiently; it was to make the site easy for a helicopter to find and then safely land at in the middle of the Russian winter at night. The three interlopers in the warehouse crept forward without a word except for the occasionally whispered, “Fiona!”
Due to the size of the building, and the large number of vehicles parked within it, they had not managed to get more than a quarter of the way down one of the walls before they all stopped, fixed in their tracks in horror. A shaft of light had appeared at the far end of the warehouse, perhaps a hundred meters away. The warehouse main doors, large steel shutters that opened via some electric motor, were beginning to slowly creak apart. They could have turned around and sneaked back out of the door they had come through, but that would have left Fiona in an even worse position than she was already in; if indeed she was still in the warehouse at all. In addition, there was no guarantee that everyone from the helicopter landing and the people who were already on the ground to meet them would all enter the warehouse. In fact, it was almost certain that at least the pilot and ground crew would still be outside – they could hear the rotors still whining away, although they did seem to be slowing down.
Travis decided to take a chance and get closer. There were plenty of vehicles to hide in the shadow of, and if whoever was entering the warehouse decided to turn on the lights they would be utterly trapped. Leaving Thyri and Bianca huddled together behind the giant wheel arch of an excavator, he ran forward and slid himself headfirst under the Caterpillar tracks of a heavy crane. The cold was intense, and he was sure that he had caused a flurry of snow crystals to shoot out the other side of the gap beneath the vehicle.
From his new position, Travis was in full body contact with the iced earth floor. His vision was obscured to his left and right by tracks, but could see in an arc directly in front of him, toward the rear of the crane he was under and the now halfway-opened doors. The doors stopped moving, and as they did, his attention was caught by a slight movement, over on the far wall of the warehouse behind a large shipping container. It was the only one he had seen in this place. Immediately, he suspected it as being the prize they sought, and just as instantly, he recognized the moving shape in the half shadow to be the other prize – Fiona. He had no time to do anything, as a group of men entered the warehouse through the open double doors. He could only see their feet, but he could hear their voices clearly, and to his great surprise they were speaking English, albeit accented. Two of the voices were very familiar.
“Here it is, Mr. Korusaki. One shipping container, full of gold. Seems a shame it has to sit here for so long.”
The man laughed at his apparent joke.
Yuri, Travis thought.
The official from the press briefing. The second voice, evidently Hideo Korusaki by his Japanese accent, said something that Travis could not quite hear.
“Oh yes,” said Yuri. “She was very specific in the details of her plan. Ingenious. Quite a remarkable mind. Where did you find such a woman?”
“She was actually partly responsible for my company losing a lot of money last year. Her plan didn’t work out that time, so she had to flee the United States in disgrace. Imagine my surprise when Monica Chen, one of the greatest fraud crime masterminds of our time arrives in Japan, came seeking our help and forgiveness,” Korusaki said.
Travis nearly had a coronary. Monica Chen! How was that even possible? She had shot him, and then had gone straight to the same company, Himiko, that she had been trying to defraud in the first place? He was so wrapped up in his thoughts, he missed the next snippet of conversation, although he subconsciously knew that it was a different speaker than either Yuri or Korusaki, and he suspected it was speaking Russian in any case. Korusaki must not be a Russian speaker either, as the conversation was being conducted in English for the main part. Yuri answered the lost question.
“Of course it will work, Sergei. Mr. Korusaki has assured us. Once the share price falls, Himiko Corporation will make a hostile takeover, and we will be rich beyond our wildest dreams. Now, Mr. Korusaki, you have seen that we have fulfilled our part...”
“Not so fast, Yuri,” said Korusaki. “I want to see inside the cargo container. You understand, of course.”
Yuri barked a couple of Russian words, and three men passed into Travis’ line of sight. Burly men, dressed in the ubiquitous thick coats and hats. They were headed right toward the cargo container that Fiona was hiding behind. Fiona recognized the danger, and slunk back into the shadows. It was no use. One of the men rounded the corner of the container and nearly fell over her, shouting in anger and alarm. Travis heard a brief scuffle, and Fiona’s cry. He saw her dragged out from behind the container, and she looked in Travis’ direction – right into his eyes. Their gaze met, and Fiona pleaded silently for help. Travis could do nothing, as she was dragged to his left, and out of sight.
Yuri spoke in Russian, then when Fiona didn’t understand, in English.
“I know you. You were with that loudmouth Yankee journalist earlier today. What are you doing here?”
“Investigative reporting,” Fiona said, with surprising coolness. “You said you had a new mine, I wanted to investigate. Very interesting to hear you planning to defraud the Multimetal company. How long did this take to set up, huh?”
Shut up, Fi! Travis willed her to hear his thoughts.
Of course, it didn’t work, and he heard a loud slap as someone punched
Fiona in the face.
“Sergei, that was excessive,” Yuri’s tone of voice sounded pleased, despite the reproach. “Mr. Korusaki, what do we do from here? This woman has heard our plans.”
Korusaki’s voice was low and calm.
“Kill her. Put the body where it will not be discovered.”
Fiona screamed, and Travis heard a gunshot. The screaming stopped.
Chapter Eight
At the sound of the gunshot, Travis instinctively flinched. There was a second gunshot, and at first he thought that Yuri or whoever had shot Fiona had shot her again. Then he heard the men shout in alarm. Another shot rang out in the night, and this time Travis had the mental alacrity to recognize that the gunshot came from outside the warehouse. He heard the helicopter engines fire up again and slid backwards from under the digger which had been his hiding place and got into a crouch. Another shot, this time from inside the warehouse, behind him, and he instinctively ducked his head and turned. Bianca was using a truck as cover, and firing a slim pistol, not at him as he had feared, but at the gap between the two metal doors of the warehouse. Travis chanced a look over one of the Caterpillar tracks of the digger, and saw Korusaki and the coast guard captain from Magadan running for the exit. Evidently, Yuri had been hit in the leg by a gun much larger than the one Bianca was firing, judging by the amount of blood pooling under his prone form; but the other two men were uninjured and were apparently unmoved by Yuri’s plight. As they ran out of the entrance to the warehouse, more rounds from both Bianca inside and the mysterious shooter outside rained down on them, but missed their marks.
“Move your butt!” Bianca yelled at Travis, as she ran as quickly as she could over the permafrost, in pursuit of the Japanese businessman and the Russian captain. Thyri was behind her, and veered off to what Travis saw was a large pool of blood. The source of it was not Yuri. He moved cautiously around the side of the digger, and there she was. Fiona. He moved closer to where Thyri was kneeling, face in her hands and shaking. Fiona was dead, he could see that. Her face was strangely twisted in death; a bullet had passed through her cleanly. He looked away. Fiona had been foolish and headstrong, but she had had her heart in the right place. She didn’t deserve to go out like this. Nobody did. He felt nauseous for a moment; then he remembered Yuri. He was only a dozen paces away from Travis, moaning with pain. Travis walked over to him, and kicked him hard in the face. The man passed out.
“We’ll deal with you later,” Travis said, to no one in particular.
Travis crossed the short distance to the warehouse entrance and took cover behind the door, looking outside into the glare. The pilot of the helicopter had landed within fifty meters of the warehouse. A prodigious bit of flying, but now the machine had fired up its engines again for a rapid take off. He saw Korusaki and the captain get on board as Bianca fired more rounds, but they missed in the miniature snowstorm whipped up by the rotors. As the helicopter lifted off, Travis saw through the canopy that he recognized the woman that sat in the pilot’s seat. Monica Chen herself. She had the audacity to blow him a kiss, as the helicopter disappeared vertically into the pitch black of the night sky. Bianca lowered her weapon, and without a word to Travis, spun on her heel and re-entered the warehouse. Standing there, listening to the retreating sound of rotor blades, Travis had no clear thoughts in his mind. Fiona had been killed, just like that, and there had been nothing he could do. Had there? Was it his fault? He should have stopped her. He should have refused the job in the first place, sent her back to serve her time in Britain. She would have been safe in her cell. He wanted a drink, more now than at any point in his entire life.
The appearance of a man, in what appeared to be a white camouflage snowsuit broke his chain of thought, although he could still almost taste the needed whisky on his tongue. The new arrival was wearing thick skiing goggles, and toted a long barreled rifle on his shoulder. Travis couldn’t find it in himself to move. If he was going to kill him, there was nothing he could do about it. The man merely raised his goggles instead of his weapon, and regarded him with cool gray eyes. He was slightly younger than Travis, he guessed. They just stood, looking at each other for a moment, when Bianca returned from the warehouse.
“Travis, I’d like you to meet Andrei, my friend.”
Bianca and Andrei hugged.
“Who are you people?” Travis said, dumbly. “You aren’t an administrator here. What’s going on?”
Andrei answered.
“We are with the FSB. Secret service, yes? We have been investigating Multimetal for some months. Not only are elements within this company looking to commit massive fraud, but now they have attempted to sell the whole company to parties overseas. Bianca called me in to watch your backs while you collected evidence that will help us put these men where they belong.”
His accent sounded mixed. Not as a Russian who had learned English here, but one who had lived in several countries where English was the dominant language. Bianca took up the conversation.
“Yes. I am afraid we had to play a trick on you. We needed foreigners to do the real detective work, so that Andrei and I could stay in the shadows. It did not turn out as we had planned.”
“Not as you planned?” Travis felt anger burn through him. “Fiona is dead. You fucking assholes. This is just a minor slip up to you people, isn’t it? Don’t you care about anything?”
Travis didn’t wait for an answer, but returned to the warehouse. Yuri was coming round. Bianca had bound his leg, but he was in quite a bad way. Fiona’s body had been covered with a sheet of plastic.
Thyri looked old, so old. Tears had frozen on her face, and there was Fiona’s blood smeared across her winter jacket.
“What do we do now, Travis? That’s it, she’s gone. She was my friend, you know? She always annoyed me a bit, but despite everything, she was my friend. This is my fault. I should have never thought we could do this. I may as well have pulled the trigger myself, getting Fiona into this adventuring game. She had a child, you know? Fifteen years old, lives with his father in Edinburgh. How am I supposed to tell him that I got his mother killed?”
Travis put his arm around her. The act of comforting another did not come naturally to him, especially as he suspected that Thyri may have assessed the situation they found themselves in almost entirely correctly. Still, there were always two sides to every story; three, in fact if he considered the truth to have a side as well.
“No, Fiona knew what she was doing. She was in from the start and wanted this as much as any of us. I should have said no from the start; this entire mission was half-assed. But we’re here anyway. We should finish this, right? For Fiona.”
Thyri just nodded. Travis didn’t actually have any idea on how to finish the quest; it wasn’t even really their job anymore with the FSB involved. It was at that moment he remembered Yuri. Bianca and Andrei were still outside, deep in conversation with a third man wearing a reflective vest, no doubt the night watchman they had been stopped by in Bianca’s car when they arrived. Travis had a window of opportunity, before the Russian agents returned to do whatever it was they did to people who tried to defraud their nation of its natural resources. He casually put his boot on Yuri’s injured leg, and applied pressure. Yuri wept, and cried, and Travis put more weight on the bullet wound. Yuri’s eyes rolled back in his skull, so Travis slapped him, backhand across the face. He felt no anger, just calculation on how much pain Yuri could take before he blacked out.
“I’m going to ask you some questions, Yuri. I don’t know what Bianca and Andrei will do with you; I imagine that I’m much more of an amateur at this than they are. Who shot Fiona? Was it you?”
Travis knelt down next to the injured man, and examined his leg. The bullet from Andrei’s rifle had passed clean through his thigh.
“No, no it wasn’t me,” Yuri said. “It was Sergei, the captain. He’s just a coast guard, but he was military once. Oh God, my leg hurts so bad. I think I will die here.”
“Not yet, y
ou won’t. Not until you’ve told me what you know. Where is that helicopter going? How long has Monica Chen been here?”
Travis poked his finger in the bullet wound on Yuri’s leg. Yuri screamed horribly.
“Tell me, Yuri. That’s got to feel so strange, right? What happens if I twist like this?”
Yuri screamed more, and raised his hands, begging for respite. Travis withdrew his finger, and wiped the gore on Yuri’s face.
“Stop it, stop it, I’ll tell you anything you want to know, please. Chen works for Korusaki. She’s a genius, I tell you. This was all her idea. I don’t know where they are going now, I swear it.”
Yuri was weeping now.
“Ok, Yuri. One more question. Then I will decide whether to kill you or not.”
He saw Yuri’s eyes widen in fear, which sent a not-unwelcome thrill through Travis. Despite his general world outlook being a peaceful one, this man had been involved in the death of one of his colleagues. The desire to kill Yuri was so strong, and Travis felt he could do it. Wrap his hands around his throat, and choke the remaining life out of him, or stove his head in with a shovel or ice pick.