After Yekaterina

by K. L. Abrahamson

  “I know. I know. I am worried for Maria, too.” He needed to be away after her, but he had to take care of his wound or he’d be no good for anyone. He just had to pray that she’d made it to safety and that the men had not found her trail.

  He didn’t want to think about the fact that they’d turned back without finishing him off.

  He went to the sink and washed his hands, then roughly pulled off his coat and stripped off off his blood-soaked clothing.

  The wound oozed red. A slightly larger wound on his back showed where the bullet had gone right through. It had cut through the extra flesh he had gained from too many years of sausages and good brown bread since Annushka had left off cooking for him, but the bullet seemed to have missed anything vital. He would live but it hurt like hell. A cleansing with alcohol had him swearing and knocking back a long pull of vodka straight from the bottle. Then he found a bandage from his first aid kit and covered the wound. It still hurt, but it was the best he could do and at least he’d stopped the worst of the bleeding. He hoped. What was going on inside his flesh he had no idea.

  He straightened and groaned at the tug of torn flesh, but dug in drawers for clean clothing and pulled them on. The others were ruined.

  His coat he rinsed in the sink and watched the blood swirl red down the drain. He wrung it out as best he could and pulled the coat back on. Feet back in his boots, he fed Koshka her tinned food and put out the bag of kibble for free choice, gave her a pat, and went out to fix the Perseus. Thankfully, he had enough spares in the lean-to on the back of the dacha. An hour and a half later and sweating profusely in the cold, he had four intact tires. He climbed in and collapsed, shivering, back in his seat. A trickle of warmth down his side said the bleeding had started again, but there was no help for it. He had to make sure Maria was safe. The Perseus’s engine roared to life. Time to collect Maria and find somewhere else else to hide. Koshka would fend for herself and if he didn’t come back, the little cat could escape out her cat door and feed on mice. She’d been a feral when she came to him. The cat door had been a compromise to keep her with him.

  He rumbled cautiously down the lane to the road. The plow had finally passed by, leaving a huge drift blocking his lane. He drove the Perseus right through it and headed down to Agafya Ryabkov’s turn-off. Instead of plowing through the drifted-in driveway, he parked the Perseus at the side of the road and hiked in, ignoring the pain at every movement. There were no tracks in the driveway, so that was good. Antonov and company hadn’t paid a visit to Agafya’s place so Maria should be waiting.

  In the clearing, the place looked immensely peaceful, the stone and log walls gone honey-colored in the sun. A spiral of blue smoke rose straight up from the chimney. The wind had died down. Thankfully, there was no sign that anyone else had been here this morning, but then the snowfall last night had most likely helped to fill in Maria’s tracks.

  He climbed the stairs and knocked, closing his eyes at the thought of seeing Maria again.

  “Who is it?” Agafya’s querulous voice came through the stout door.

  “It’s me, Kazakov. I’ve come for Maria.”

  There was silence a moment. “There’s no Maria here.”

  The old woman had to be hiding her.

  “Agafya Ryabkov, this is Alexander Kazakov, your neighbor. Maria is my friend. I sent her here last night for safety. Surely she came.”

  The door opened an inch and the old woman peered out, eyes glittering. “When I say there’s no Maria here, I mean it. What were you thinking, sending a stranger to my house?”

  What indeed. By the suspicion on her face, even if Maria had come there was every chance the old woman would have turned her away. His heart started pounding. If Maria wasn’t here, where was she?

  “Did someone knock on your door last night?” He turned from her to scan the yard and saw the truth. Only his footprints crossed the pristine layer of new snow. What he’d thought of as good news at the lack of faint indentations in the snow was actually a scarier truth: Maria hadn’t come here.

  He looked back at Agafya. “If a woman comes named Maria, please take her in and keep her safe. I will be back for her.”

  He plunged down her stairs and back to the road, climbed back into the Perseus, and reversed back to his lane.

  Had she gotten misdirected in the dark? Was she still walking, exhausted, through the forest? In this cold that was dangerous.

  Fighting the pain stitching his side, he followed the Perseus’s track up the lane and found the place where he and Maria had set out through the trees. There were three sets of boot prints over theirs.

  He swore. He never should have left her alone.

  Dreading what he would find, he pushed on through the woods, the sunlight placing bright bands of light and shadow over his vision. His breath steamed. His vision misted. His side throbbed and his legs wobbled. He needed to rest. He needed to eat, but he kept going until he reached the spot where his path branched off. A pair of tracks overlaid his.

  He’d been lucky, because he’d had no idea someone was in pursuit. If they had come upon him while he was hunting Alenin and Antonov, he could have ended up with more than a bullet through his side.

  A single large set of prints followed Maria’s trail.

  He followed, noting how Maria’s strides had lengthened, though they were still not as long as her pursuer’s strides. She knew she was being followed and she was trying to escape. Then her path split, one of her tracks clearly heading for the road, while the other went forward. The snow around the forward path indicated that she had backtracked and turned aside to the road.

  Kazakov stopped. What the hell had she done?

  He followed the forward track and then backtracked as she had done. What had she seen that would make her do this?

  He stood at the spot where she’d turned aside. The snow was deep here. Had she thought the road would give her more speed? If so, why the few strides ahead and then backtrack? She could have just turned toward the road.

  In the panic of last night for her to do this spoke of either great confusion or purpose. Cautiously, he retraced her forward path to the turn back point. There had to be some reason. Something that had turned her back last night.

  A gunshot? The sound would have carried but surely concern for him wouldn’t have turned her around to face the man chasing her. He stopped in the tiny clearing where she had reversed her direction and turned around, studying her footprints to get a sense of her actions. In the sunlight and shadows there were so many prints it was almost as if she was masking her tracks, laying confusion upon confusion as if she didn’t know what to do.

  But most of the tracks congregated on one side of the clearing. To hide intent there?

  He scanned the brush but there was no sign of a hidden track continuing. He turned back to the clearing. Or were the heavy tracks to draw attention away from elsewhere. He crossed the clearing and peered into the brush.

  No trail showed, but only visible because of the angle of the sun was a rectangular slot in the snow. He reached in a gloved hand and pulled out the data machine. His legs gave and he thumped down in the snow.

  “Aah, Maria.” He bowed his head. She’d known this was important so she’d wasted time hiding the damn thing, thereby risking herself.

  He staggered up, feeling suddenly exhausted, and retraced his steps back to where her path cut to the road. He followed, dreading finding her body in the snow.

  Through the trees he followed the signs. Maria’s stride was a staggering stumble and half fall against the trees as she tried to outrun the man behind her. A snow angel where she’d fallen. A tree cleared of snow where she’d bumped it.

  And then the trees parted and the plowed road appeared, but on this side of the drift were the signs of what had happened. A flurry of flattened snow and deep indentations that caught the sun and shadows. Someone had been pushed into the snow in a caricature of a snow angel, on either side the indentation of knees.

&n
bsp; There was blood in the snow where the angel’s head had been.

  Chapter 12

  With the pain radiating out from his side, the world was a distant concept that he could not quite grasp as he steered the Perseus down the slope from the mountains. Maria had been captured and Antonov and Alenin were part of it, though he could not fathom why. He would make them tell him where she was.

  The open steppe, the houses that devoured the open fields, played across his windscreen like the latest movie. It was there, but not really. All a dream. All a dream just like Fergana was a dream. The dream of a people and New Moscow was his nightmare, because Maria had been taken and he’d promised to protect her.

  And failed. He’d failed in so much in his life. Failed to live up to his father’s expectations by being too bookish, even though he had joined the police force. Failed his marriage. Failed to find Yekaterina and Semetai’s killer. He could not fail in this.

  Beside him in the still freezing vehicle, even though the hot breath of the heater filled his face, lay the damnable data machine still wrapped in its protective leather. What was protecting Maria?

  She had given herself for this machine and it was not a good trade.

  The streets of New Moscow were filled with sunlight glinting like knife blades on snow. Antonov and Alenin. They would know where Maria was being held. The concrete streets filled with a film of dark snow. Frost covered the edges of the Perseus’s windshield as he pulled into the curb as close to the police station as he dared.

  He sat for a moment, inhaling the stale scent of wet wool and old blood and preparing himself for the confrontation. Then he secreted the data machine under the front seat and stuffed his emergency blanket in after it. Opening the door, he climbed out. It took a moment to steady himself on the side of the Perseus. His legs were watery. His feet too many thousand feet below him.

  But his pistol was in his pocket and he knew where he was going. He struck out around the vehicle and down the sidewalk. The ten steps up to the station’s front door were a cliff face he scaled. Through the doors, he focused on not staggering across to the secure inner door. The officer on guard recognized him and let him in so that he could reach the elevator. When he faced forward before the doors closed, there were too many people looking at him.

  The doors slid closed and he slumped against the wall as the elevator lifted him to the third floor. When the door dinged open, he straightened and stepped into the squad room.

  Old tea and sweat and a little bit of iron fear scented the air as he scanned those present. Crew-cut Pavel Chelomeyev and Sherepov, his trainer and partner, looked up from their desks by the wall. They stopped their discussion. Then Detektivs Razin and Pogolin stepped out of the coffee room. Both stopped dead when they saw him.

  “Jeezus, Kazakov,” Chelomeyev said. “What the hell happened? That looks like blood.”

  “Are you okay?” Razin asked.

  Kazakov looked down at himself. The bandage job he had done was clearly insufficient. Fresh blood gleamed wetly through the thickness of his black wool coat. He felt dizzy for a moment and braced a leg against a desk.

  “Where’re Antonov and Alenin?” His voice was a rough growl.

  “Out on a case at Yekaterina Park,” Chelomeyev said.

  Kazakov felt his heart miss a beat. He turned to leave.

  “Kazakov! Wait! Let me call you a doctor!”Chelomeyev called.

  Kazakov stabbed the elevator door and it slid open. Chelomeyev came after him, but the door thankfully slid closed.

  Down the three floors and he squared his shoulders. He knew he wasn’t thinking straight but he had to get to Yekaterina Park. Something about the location filled him with ill-ease. He shook himself. He had to find and confront Antonov and Alenin. Demand that they tell him where Maria was. Do whatever was necessary to get Maria released. He’d trade the damned data machine if it would do the trick.

  The walk to the Perseus was miles farther than he’d thought. He climbed in and slumped behind the wheel, wishing he could just go to sleep. But Maria needed him. He started the vehicle and pulled out into traffic so abruptly that brakes squealed and horns blared at him. He steered the Perseus through traffic far faster than he should, turning onto the quiet streets that fronted the park and the Red Veil. Red and blue lights flashed at the end of the treed park. The coroner was there and uniformed police. He accelerated down past the false quiet of the Red Veil and came to a stop on top of the curb behind the coroner’s van.

  Antonov and Alenin. He staggered out of the Perseus, feeling drunk with rage, betrayal, and pain. Where were they? The wind off the mountains rattled tree branches together like bones. Two uniformed officers stood aside smoking, much as they had when Collin Archer’s body had been found. Khalil Khan stood beside the cloth-covered body, making notes on a clipboard.

  In his heart he knew it would be Maria.

  He lurched over to Khan. “What happened?”

  He leaned down to shift the cloth, but Khan knocked his hand away.

  Khan looked him up and down. “What happened to you?”

  Kazakov waved the question away. “Who is it? Is it a woman?” By the size of the body, it looked like it.

  Khan must have read the fear Kazakov felt. The M.E. hesitated.

  “Where’s Antonov? Alenin?” Kazakov demanded.

  “I don’t know.” Khan shook his head, his gaze apparently held by Kazakov’s bloody clothing. “They left when I arrived.”

  Kazakov looked down at the tarp-covered body and thought he might be sick.

  No Antonov or Alenin to be found. None to be confronted. Kazakov felt his strength unraveling. He glanced down at the body. Another to be added to the rolls of Yekaterina Park’s dead. The tsarina who had left a trail of bodies across Asia was still doing so here.

  “What have you got?” he asked softly, fighting back his fear and urgency. He carefully erased his emotions from his face and nodded at the carefully shrouded figure in the snow.

  “Woman. Maybe thirty. Beaten to death.”

  His knees threatened to give way and he staggered. Khan caught his arm.

  “I need to see,” Kazakov said, bracing himself.

  Khan frowned. “It is not—pretty.”

  Swallowing, Kazakov nodded and Khan bent to twitch the tarp off the face.

  Maria.

  Kazakov groaned and felt the tears well. He dug at his eyes with finger and thumb because he should not feel this ball of tangled emotion clotting his chest. He barely knew her and yet he knew her too well, her sun-kissed olive flesh gone gray in the snow and battered with bruises. The flesh was split on her brow, blood pooled in her gaze. Her refined nose was twisted sideways from a horrible blow. Her sweet lips mashed and pulped.

  He started to fall, but Khan caught him. “What the hell’s going on, Detektiv?” His hand slid Kazakov’s coat open and slipped inside, then pulled out again, full of blood. “Allah save us.” He scanned their surroundings. “You need a hospital.”

  Kazakov shook his head.

  Khan’s mouth pressed into an unhappy line. “Then at least let me look at your wound. I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

  Kazakov shook his head again. He was not leaving his vehicle here. If he went with Khan, it would only be for a bandage and then he would continue his search for his two fellow officers. He turned toward the Perseus and staggered, only Khan’s quick steadying hand stopping him from falling.

  “You can’t possibly drive yourself.”

  “I can drive.” It was a promise. An oath for Maria. But could he really? He felt like collapsing. His legs felt weak. And a terrible anger surged through him, heating his blood. Antonov and Alenin. They would pay for Maria five-fold.

  Khan resignedly guided him back to the Perseus. “I shouldn’t let you do this. I should be calling you an ambulance. Now listen: you will follow me to the hospital, do you understand? You will follow me and we will deal with your wound.”

  “And her. Maria.” Kazakov lo
oked back at the body. Leaving her here, so close to the Red Veil had to be a message. But why, when they could have used her as a trading point to get the data machine. Unless—did they not know he had found it? Or did they know and was this a warning of what would happen to him if he did not return it? But return it to who? The Chinese embassy?

  “You knew her?” Khan asked.

  Khan pulled the vehicle’s door opened and tsked at the bloody seat. Kazakov slid inside and lay his head back. “Her name is Maria di Maria. She was a witness in the Collin Archer case. I was protecting her until they came for us last night.”

  “Is that when you were shot?”

  Not opening his eyes Kazakov nodded. It was so tempting to sleep. So tempting to just curl up in a ball and admit defeat.

  “There was evidence taken from this crime scene,” said Khan. “There was evidence of a fight and the perpetrator left something behind this time—unlike Collin Archer.”

  Kazakov opened his eyes and sat up. “Like what?”

  Khan shook his head. “A hat like the one you’re wearing, except far newer.” He slammed the Perseus’s door shut and rapped on the roof. Attendants were already carrying Maria’s body to the wagon and Khan climbed into the coroner’s van. It pulled out and Kazakov started the Perseus, wincing as the vehicle thunked down off the curb. Overhead a film of cloud was dampening the sun, and the mountains were fading into a gray distance. All except Yekaterina’s mountain.

  The Perseus’s cab filled with a sound like engines and he scanned the sky, just as he had done so many times in his life, for signs the final battle had begun. There was nothing there, but something was coming. He knew it as surely as he knew Baba Yaga would likely figure in a Russian fairy tale. He accelerated down the snowy street to catch up, and Yekaterina Park, the scene of so much death, fell behind.

  If Antonov and Alenin thought that leaving Kazakov’s hat at the scene would stop him, they didn’t understand who they were dealing with. He would put things right with Antonov and Alenin in his own final battle. But first he needed Khan’s help—and not the way the little M.E. thought.