The Beauty of Bucharest

by S. J. Varengo

  Ileana opened the door to the service tunnels. She was so angry now that she was randomly emitting the animal/ghost sound as she walked along. She was no longer running, because she realized there were two possible outcomes at this point. Either the women and whoever was helping them would get lost in the maze of the tunnels, tunnels that she herself had a role in redesigning when Bogdan bought the Palace from UNESCO, or, and as the thought formed, she made the sound again, they had already climbed the ladder and exited through the manhole. If that was the case, she was already a dead woman.

  But would they do that? Would twenty nearly naked women climb out of the tunnel and run through the streets of Bucharest?

  Of course they would, she realized. Would the temporary embarrassment of public nudity stop them from escaping the permanent horror that not getting away would promise? They would have run screaming for help through the park and would soon be surrounded by idiot bystanders and then even stupider police.

  Realizing that, she made a decision. Following them up the ladder was probably more of a risk than it was worth. If police were called, as they most certainly would be, a blue-haired woman followed by a dozen gun-wielding men might rouse a bit of suspicion. Therefore, she stopped abruptly, causing Marius to walk into her. In spite of the fact that he showed the most promise of any of them, she turned and slapped him. He accepted the assault, not even rubbing his already reddening cheek.

  “We split up,” she said. “Who knows the tunnels?” Five hands, including Marius’s, rose. “You?” she said to the young man. “You’ve only been here a week.”

  “Two, actually, and it seemed like something I should know.”

  Ileana lifted her hand again, and in spite of his resolve, he flinched a little, anticipating another slap. But instead, in a move totally out of her character, she patted his sore cheek tenderly. “Good.” Then turning to the other four men who had raised their hands, she said, “Take a couple others with you and spread out. Search every corridor. If you find anything, use your comms to call me. Understood?” There was a murmur of assent. She turned to Marius. “You’re with me.”

  He nodded.

  With an efficiency that was predicted by nothing the men had done thus far, they split into four groups and quickly moved out, splitting into smaller groups each time they reached an intersection.

  Ileana led Marius through a series of turns, growling each time the way proved empty. “Where the fuck are they?”

  “One tunnel leads to the park,” Marius offered, saying the one thing in the world Ileana did not want to hear.

  “I am aware, boy. Keep looking, keep listening.”

  “How do you suppose they got to them? The door in is impossible to detect.”

  Now she stopped and turned on him. Potential or not, she was ready to skin someone alive, and he was the closest body. “Apparently, it is not impossible.”

  “I just meant someone would almost have to know where to look.”

  The statement caught Ileana by surprise. Andrei, for all his Neanderthal stupidity, knew the tunnels. He knew the hidden entrance to the basement. But why would he have done such a thing? Some sort of suicidal revenge plot? She’d cursed him out in the past far worse than she had this time. It didn’t seem like it had been enough to cause him to go rogue. Then a second thought struck, which made her shudder. Could the American bitch have somehow overpowered him and forced him to help her? Andrei was a huge man, and the woman, while shapely, Ileana had to admit, was slight. Of course, to a six-foot-tall woman, most others seemed petite. But Andrei made her look little. Could the skinny American have found a way to get him to do her bidding?

  Unlikely.

  But not impossible.

  Still that knowledge, or suspicion, or whatever it was, didn’t really do her much good now. If Andrei had gotten them in, it appeared he’d gotten them back out as well. Ileana was a heartbeat away from going back through the door, walking upstairs to tell Bogdan what had happened, and preparing herself for her execution. She hoped that her years of faithful service would have earned her a quick death.

  Then yet another revelation sparked in her brain. Andrei knew the tunnels well, and he would know about the other hidden door as well. The one that led to the hallway that housed Bogdan’s cigar-polluted study.

  The many conflicting motivations for him alone, or him under the sway of the American to re-enter the Palace were a little too much for her to work through. Was it a stupid move? Was it a brilliant move? Was it even conceivable? Or was she grasping at one final straw, one teasing-the-cat laser dot on the floor, to be chased but never caught? The chances were far better that they’d climbed through the manhole, but this was an alternative she could check out without running headlong into a throng of police.

  American bitch or no (though she prayed it was her), Andrei or no (and for this, she prayed even harder)… whoever was helping herd the cattle may have gone up the hidden staircase, and she resolved to find out.

  “Follow,” she said to Marius, beginning a new series of turns through the tunnels.

  It was a testament to their design that in all the maneuvers they undertook, only once did she encounter another group of searchers, who dejectedly informed her they’d found nothing, just as she knew they would. With an admonition to keep looking, she flew past them until she reached the hallway with the second hidden door.

  Unlike Dan, she did not need to search for the door audibly. She’d been on both sides of it many times, and she walked directly to where the tile by the floor that triggered it was located. Just as she was about to tap it with her foot, she noticed what looked like a scuff on it, and she smiled.

  Maybe the kitty could catch the dancing dot after all.

  15

  Showdown

  Just before opening the door at the top of the stairs, Nicole turned and looked down at the women following her. “From here on, silence is essential. You must be more quiet than you’ve ever been in your lives.” As proof they understood, they all nodded silently. “Good. You also need to know that there is a very good chance things will get ugly. If anything I do upsets your sensibilities, remember I’m doing it for you.”

  Ana Albu stepped forward. “I do not believe any of us have any delicate sensibilities left within us. Do what you must, as will we.”

  Nicole looked with renewed respect at the young model, and for a moment, she hoped for Bogdan Grigorescu’s sake that she got to him before they did. But then she decided she didn’t care who got to him, as long as he was cleaned.

  She inched the door ajar. Peering through the crack, she saw an elaborately decorated hallway, with antique tapestries hung on the walls, a number of tables and pedestals holding delicately carved marble sculptures, some of which appeared to be from the Renaissance. And she saw, much to her delight, that the floors were lushly carpeted. That would help their cause. She also saw no sign of any people at all. She pushed the door open wide enough to cautiously poke her head out and look in the other direction. No one there either. With a final finger to the lips gesture, she beckoned the women to follow.

  Nicole’s brain again began to shift energy from one function, rescuing the women and keeping them calm, to her primary reason for being here, killing Bogdan. It seemed to her that the sooner she accomplished that goal, the sooner she could find a feasible way to get the women to real safety, instead of the series of shaky reprieves she was offering them now. It occurred to her that even after she terminated the mark, she didn’t really know what to do about them. Would a phone call to the police bring them, sirens blaring, to the rescue? Or would an American woman telling them that a slaver was selling women out of Crețulescu Palace be assumed to be some sort of stupid prank? More likely the latter, she had to admit.

  But a moment later, contemplating that eventuality was abruptly cancelled as a faint but distinct odor began to reach her. In spite of her instructions to the women to remain silent, little squeaks of fear escaped them involuntarily as they sensed
it too. Nicole remembered from Viktor’s briefing, which now seemed as though it had occurred a month earlier, that Grigorescu was known for having a cigar lit constantly, and that his chosen brand, Carpati, were particularly pungent. To her, it was abstract data. To the women who followed her, it was an olfactory reminder of much suffering.

  The bottom line, however, was that it meant he was probably near. However, there were doors lining the hall in both directions, and she wasn’t really keen to go to each one and sniff. So instead, she turned to the women and pointed interrogatively in both directions, silently asking which way to go. Twenty hands pointed as one, and Nicole turned and headed the way they’d indicated.

  Immediately, she could tell the women had not led her astray, as the reek of the cigar grew stronger. She reached a door and pointed, but the women only stared blankly or cast their eyes to the floor. She understood. Nicole still had no endgame planned, but she was ready to take out Bogdan. She knocked on the door, then moved to the side.

  “Haide, doamne!” came the growling voice from within the room. The women’s reaction made it clear that it was Bogdan Grigorescu. They honored her wish that they remain silent, but they moved uncomfortably at the sound, taking a collective step backward.

  When Nicole did not respond to Bogdan’s command to enter, she heard him curse and call again. Again she ignored him, actually knocking a second time. A moment later, her tactic had the desired effect, and the door flew open. A gun held by a muscular man in a tailored suit poked through the door, followed presently by the man himself, and Nicole put a bullet in the side of his head. His reflexive death spasms caused him to pull the trigger of his gun, the shot harmlessly breaking a vase of roses. Stepping over him, Nicole filled the doorway. A second gunman less than five feet from her moved in front of the corpulent slaver, but before he could fire off a shot, Nicole emptied three rounds into him and he crumpled to the ground, revealing Bogdan.

  He was unarmed, stupidly, but stood looking at her, defiantly, with an evil cast to his eyes, especially the one by which ran the deep, red scar. He was fat and encircled with cigar smoke. Although his clothes were expensive, they seemed too small for his round, doughy form, and they were darkened with sweat that started under his arms and extended down the sides of his torso. He was smiling. Her training dictated that she fire at once. Finish the job. No drama, no grandstanding.

  But never before had she stood before a man who filled her with such hatred, and it seemed to her that a double tap to center mass was just too good for him. She began to speak to him, in English, through clenched teeth.

  “You pig-bastard. How dare you stand there and smile at me? Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes, of course. You are the American whore sent to kill me. Somehow, you are still alive, in spite of what my former head of security told me.” Nicole did not miss the wording… “former head.” Clearly, Bogdan was not happy with Ileana’s performance of late. Odd that Nicole might end up being her savior when all was said and done.

  “Fine, call me an American whore. And yes, I’m here to kill you. I may yet. But there are others…” Nicole had intended to bring the women in and give them the satisfaction of seeing her kill the man who had taken their lives, who had made them walking dead… women for whom life had become a constant horror and in whom very little of humanity remained. But suddenly, she heard a scream and felt herself pushed to the side as Ana Albu raced past her. The model held a white shard of porcelain in her hand, a remnant from the destroyed flower vase. Far faster than Nicole would have imagined a person who had been starved and kept crammed with nineteen other women in a cell barely large enough for one, Ana ran to where the glowering man stood, and before Grigorescu could react, plunged the shard into his eye.

  Bogdan screamed in pain, but his hand reached quickly to the desk by which he stood, grabbing a silver letter opener, and in a desperate motion, he stabbed the model in the side of the neck.

  Nicole’s aim had been momentarily disrupted as Ana had pushed by her, but now she refocused and fired a single shot, which struck Grigorescu in the mouth. He spit shattered teeth and blood, much of it hitting Ana, who, grasping the object protruding from her slender neck, slowly sagged to the floor.

  Bogdan remained standing, though his head was now gushing blood from two separate wounds. Nicole fired again, aiming lower this time. The round struck him in the groin, and he screamed again in pain, his shattered mouth opening grotesquely as the sound escaped him.

  Suddenly, the other women poured into the room. Some stood aside and looked on, but many, like Ana, held shards of the broken vase in their hands. Some gripped them so tightly that their own hands were bleeding, but they seemed impervious as they bore down on the man.

  His knees were buckling now, and he was swaying like a sickly tree in a buffeting wind. But before he could fall, they were on him, striking him wherever they could reach. Again and again, the shards found flesh, and Dan, who had finally entered the room, was nauseated by the sound they made as they tore into Grigorescu’s body.

  Nicole was sure he’d been dead for several minutes by the time they stopped stabbing him. She was already pulling Ana Albu back from the scene of carnage. She put her hand against the wound in her neck, applying pressure to quell the bleeding, but she could see that though the wound was deep, the letter opener had missed any vital areas. It was survivable.

  “Is he dead?” she asked, looking up at Nicole with diamond-hard resolve in her perfectly formed eyes. She did not yet know she would live, but she didn’t care… so long as Bogdan was dead as well.

  “He is,” Nicole answered.

  “Did he die horribly?”

  “He suffered greatly at your hands and at theirs.”

  “And yours?”

  “I hurt him badly.”

  Ana nodded. “Good,” she said.

  Without being told, Dan had run to the desk and had dialed 9-1-1. Nothing happened. Nicole looked and saw his confused expression. “Danny, it’s 1-1-2 for emergency services in Romania.”

  He sheepishly hung up, and then dialed again. “Hello,” he said when the female voice answered. “Do you speak English?”

  “Yes, what is your emergency?”

  “We have found Ana Albu, but she’s been wounded by the man that was holding her captive.”

  “Ana Albu? The model? You have located her?”

  “Yes, but she’s hurt. She’s been stabbed in the neck.”

  “Your location comes up as… as Știrbei Vodă street nr. 39. There must be a malfunction. That is Crețulescu Palace. That cannot be correct.”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “Dispatching… stay on the line until…”

  Dan hung up. “Do we need to be gone before they get here?”

  Nicole had already enlisted one of the other women to apply pressure to Ana’s wound. She stood. “It would be a very good idea. But I’m worried that they still aren’t safe.”

  As if in answer to her concerns, a shot rang out. One of the women who had been standing back, merely observing, fell forward. Behind her, her face a mask of fury, her blue hair soaked and stringy with sweat, stood Ileana Gabor.

  “The jailer!” another woman called. “Nicole, she hurt us too.”

  Nicole raised her gun, but before she could fire, Ileana pulled the trigger again, and Nicole’s body jerked awkwardly as she spun and fell.

  An instant later, another shot boomed, but someone familiar with weapons might have noticed it had a different sound than the shot that had felled the captive woman and Nicole. And as the other prisoners looked on in shock, Ileana Gabor dropped to her knees.

  Dan’s smoking .357 was still pointed as he took a step toward her. Ileana attempted to raise her weapon, but Dan fired a second time. The first shot had hit her in the stomach. The next struck the shoulder of the arm that had held the gun. As he reached her, he pulled the cattle prod from his waistband and used it on her repeatedly. The women had been prepared for an act of vio
lence from Nicole. She’d warned them. But they were not expecting much of anything from Dan. The only emotion greater than their surprise was their thrill at seeing “the jailer” hurt. Finally, he threw the prod aside.

  “You shot my wife, you cunt!” Dan said, standing beside the kneeling woman. Had he seen a reflection of his face at that moment, he would not have recognized himself.

  He put the gun against her head and pulled the trigger.

  The women standing nearby screamed as they were sprayed with Ileana’s blood and brain matter.

  “Danny!” Nicole called.

  Dan turned and ran to her. She was sitting upright on the floor, holding her left arm.

  “You’re alive!”

  “Jesus, have a little faith in me!” she said, managing a laugh. “She hit my arm.” She reached up to him with her right hand, and he pulled her to her feet. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  It was then they noticed the young man standing by the door. He held a gun in his hand, but it was pointed to the floor. Nicole began to lift her weapon, but then looked closely at his face, and in it she saw someone for whom a life within a criminal empire had suddenly lost its luster. He looked stunned, overwhelmed by the gruesome scene.

  “This would be a good time for you to run away,” she said. “Maybe learn a trade. There’s always construction in Bucharest.” Though she was quite sure she wouldn’t have to shoot him, she pointed the gun at him anyway, to drive home her point. Dan followed her lead. The young man’s eyes seemed to come into focus, and he dropped his weapon and bolted out of the room, to the right toward the front entrance of the Palace.

  An entrance that would soon be teeming with police and other first responders, Nicole realized.

  “Come on, Dan. We need to go.”

  They started to move toward the door, but from behind them, Ana Albu called, “Wait!”

  Knowing that time was against them now, Nicole nonetheless stopped and turned. The model was sitting up. Her face was still stunning, even covered in her own blood.