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The vibrating phone roused him from his restful sleep. The continued blackness in the room was the first clue that something wasn’t right. There weren’t many reasons for a late-night call. He reached out to the nightstand and grasped for the phone.
But the screen was black and the vibrating continued.
Not that phone. The other one.
A shot of clarity spun through his mind, pulling him further from sleep and into reality. He put the idle phone down and turned to his side to reach down and open the bottom drawer of the nightstand. He fumbled around at the back until his hand found the thrumming device.
He pulled the phone out and for a couple of seconds the flashing screen lit up the room in ugly green light.
‘What?’
No introductions necessary. Only two people had this number.
‘I got your message.’
‘OK?’
‘It’s over. Clean up tonight.’
He sighed and worked the words over in his head for a couple of beats.
‘Clean up… everything?’
‘We have no choice. I’ll explain after. But you don’t have much time. Get it done now. Clean the whole house. Everything. Make it look… convincing. You know where to meet.’
‘OK.’
The line went dead. He didn’t move for several seconds.
Clean the whole house.
The instruction was simple enough really, even if he didn’t understand why.
He got dressed, washed his face – as though it were a necessary step before he moved on. He dried his skin with the fluffy white hand towel his hosts had left for him in the tasteful en suite. Luxury all around him, inside and out.
They’d been good to him here, really.
Clean the whole house. Everything.
Everything. Which meant everyone.
He took the Beretta pistol and checked it over and kept it in hand as he moved to the door. He wouldn’t take any other belongings with him. He wouldn’t need them, and they’d only slow him down.
He opened the door and stared into the dark corridor. No lights, no sounds.
He crept outside, his shoes landing softly on the thick, patterned carpet. Not that he could see the intricate weaves right now, although he imagined
his feet fitting neatly around the familiar patterns as he walked.
He reached the next bedroom. His heart gently pulsed in his chest. He took a deep, silent breath and pushed the door open a few inches. Not completely dark in there. A little plug-in nightlight shone in the corner, creating a colorful array of stars and planets across the back wall. He heard the gentle sounds of sleep from the single bed. Noticed the ruffled hair beneath the covers.
Clean the whole house. Everything.
He’d come back to this one. Perhaps easier that way.
He moved further along the corridor to the next door. The master bedroom. Master and missus. Both were inside. He could hear them even before he’d opened the door: the deep guttural breathing of him, and the softer, quite blunt exhales of her. He imagined them in the oversized bed. Him on his back, mouth wide open. Her pulled close to the very edge of the bed, facing away from her husband, cuddling the silky sheets to her neck for comfort that he didn’t give her.
But thinking of her under the sheets only sent a very different image – memories – of her flashing through his mind.
He shook it away. No time for thinking about anything like that now.
Clean the whole house. Everything.
Gun at the ready, he stepped inside.
He wanted to sleep but couldn’t. His body was exhausted, every muscle, tendon, bone ached, screamed for respite, willed for recovery before the toil of tomorrow.
If he even made tomorrow…
He tossed and turned, trying to find a comfortable position but within minutes an arm or a leg was numbing up, and even if he could get past that unease he couldn’t clear his mind of the whirring thoughts. And then there were the sounds. Not noises – they were too quiet – but even as he tried his best to think of absolutely nothing, he inevitably honed in on the sounds. The light clacking of the branch against the window. Not quite rhythmic enough to provide a focus to help him reach slumber. Then there were the breaths of his brothers in the room with him. Not snoring, because he knew none of them were in deep sleep either. Just their breaths. Slow, shallow. In. Out. The occasional grunt.
All annoying as hell.
Gregor turned over again. From his back to his side and he had to roll his shoulder and shake his arm to get feeling back in it.
‘Would you quit moving around!’ came a hiss from the nearest bed to him. Vasily.
Gregor didn’t respond to his eldest brother. Not his real brother. None of the other boys here were, even if they knew little else but this place, each other.
‘I can’t sleep either,’ came a quieter, softer voice. Andre.
No one said anything to that. Andre was often overlooked by his older, more able brothers. Would his younger age, his weaker body make him the most likely one taken tonight?
Gregor concentrated on the sound now coming from somewhere outside the door. Footsteps. Quiet to start with but getting louder and more distinct with each step.
Clop, clop, clop. A steady rhythm up the stairs.
Clop, clop, clop. A steady, albeit slightly slower, calmer thud along the corridor.
Gregor tensed up. His eyes were wide open, but he could see nothing in the dark room. No light came in through the blackout curtains, no light seeped in through the edges around the door – the corridor outside remained in darkness too. He didn’t need the light. A ghoul of the night could see just fine in blackness.
The room fell horribly silent, not even the sound of a breath anymore. Gregor was holding his tight, imagined his brothers were too. As though doing so would protect them.
Was it possible to hold a breath so long that you simply died? He really didn’t know. Perhaps he was about to find out because he wasn’t letting go.
A creak broke through the ghastly silence. Metal twisting, scraping, crying out. Pleading almost. Only the doorknob turning, but in the quiet room, in Gregor’s addled mind it sounded deafening and beastly.
A whimper from across the room greeted the sound. Andre.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Vasily hissed.
But what difference did it really make if he heard them? He knew the three of them were in there. Where else would they be?
Gregor waited. Staring to where he knew the door stood…
But nothing happened
Moments later the footsteps sounded out again. Moving away. To the next door along.
Vasily heaved a sigh of relief. Gregor slowly expelled the air from his lungs, feeling light-headed as he did so, he’d held on to the breath so long. As he sucked air – oxygen – back in, it quickly surged to his brain, matched in equal measure with adrenaline. A delayed response really as he’d have needed the fight or flight chemical powering him moments before.
Now he didn’t need it at all.
The boys in the next room did.
Or at least, one of them did.
Above the relieved sighs and gasps from his room, Gregor heard the door to the next room opening. Heard the booming voice. Shuffling. Banging. Cries of anguish. A scream. A thud. The door slammed closed again. Footsteps moved away. Two sets. One set much heavier, harder than the other.
‘Just be pleased it wasn’t one of us,’ Vasily whispered a few moments later when the footsteps had faded away, his voice breaking through Andre’s soft sobbing.
‘No,’ Gregor said. ‘There’s nothing to be pleased about.’
‘You get to sleep tonight. You get to wake up in the morning. Be thankful for that.’
‘You think waking up here is a blessing?’
‘Better than being dead.’
Gregor wasn’t sure about that. But one thing he did know for sure…
he’d have one less brother come morning.
Present day
Buryatia, Russia
He’d never get used to the cold. This cold. There would never be anything normal about such an extreme. Human beings – warm-blooded creatures with no fur – simply weren’t made to withstand it. Of course, humans had learned to adapt to the cold, but that wasn’t the same thing as belonging. And having to live day after day, week after week, month after month out here didn’t make it any easier, any more normal, any more pleasant.
He pulled his knees a few inches higher, closer to his chest, wriggled his fingers a few times to make sure he could still feel them. Just about. Hector, huddled next to him on the mattress, shuffled but said nothing – his movement enough to tell Gregor that his sleep had been disturbed.
Gregor pushed his head closer to his chest, into Hector’s shoulder, their bodies curled around each other under the musty old cover. There was nothing sensual about their closeness; having their bodies pushed against the other was simple survival. Gregor closed his eyes and tried to get some more sleep but the memories of him and his brothers and that place came back stronger and faster this time.
He really didn’t know which place of confinement was worse. Then or now?
Just like all those years ago he found no more sleep before the sun’s rays poked up over the concrete sill of the cell, casting light over the men’s bunk in the otherwise unlit space.
Gregor sat up and pushed himself away from Hector who grumbled and curled up into a ball on the mattress. Mattresses, actually. Two of them, one each for the top and bottom bunk, although a couple of months ago, as winter took hold, they’d moved both mattresses to the bottom bunk and had slept together every night since. The two mattresses together approached something like comfort – if you could ignore the horribly cramped conditions for two six foot-plus men, and the inhumane cold.
Other inmates here had taken a different tactic, and had simply torn the mattresses apart, taken the innards out and used the cheap fabric to stuff into their clothing. It made them look like Michelin Men as they walked around the cell block. It probably kept them warmer, but it also meant they had to sleep on nothing but the bare bed, or even worse, the cold concrete floor.
Gregor stood up, stretched, the shivers worsening now his body was unfurled and he was on his own. He walked to the barred window, the early morning sunlight not enough to protect from the chilly air that seeped in through the single-pane window and its draughty surround. No, more than seeped in – the cold air came through in non-stop gusts.
He looked outside. Same as always. Beyond the nine-foot-high concrete wall he saw nothing but white stretching into the distance. Nothing living out there at this time of year that he could see. Even the animals built for this climate were sheltering.
He reached out to the radiator below him, his icy fingers poking through the many holes in his woolen mittens. The metal wasn’t even lukewarm. Warmer than the ambient air, sure, but nowhere near enough to adequately heat the room. Only enough to make sure the inmates didn’t freeze to death in their sleep. Well, not every night, anyway.
Gregor heard the guards approaching outside. Heard the flaps on the doors of neighboring cells open and bang shut again. Soon it was their turn.
‘Breakfast, lunch, and dinner,’ the gruff voice said as a tray was pushed through the hole. Gregor moved over and took the tray and peeked out at the two uniformed men standing the other side. He held the eye of the taller, more brutish of the two a moment. Yuri. Gregor received a slight nod, but no more words were said before Yuri slapped shut the flap.
‘What have we got?’ Hector said, sitting up on the bunk.
Gregor took the tray over.
‘Big Mac. Fries. Chocolate milkshake.’
Hector tutted. ‘Bastards. It’s supposed to be pizza Tuesday.’
Tuesday? Was it Tuesday? Gregor couldn’t remember.
Both men chuckled before their more usual moroseness took over once more. Gregor hated laughing. Hated smiling even. They were primitive responses that the mind mistook for something approaching pleasure, releasing endorphins into the bloodstream subconsciously. He didn’t want that. He didn’t want anything to gloss over the reality of the situation out here.
Both men moved the paltry food about with their fingers as though deciding whether they would dive straight in or not.
Hector slumped back against the wall empty-handed and closed his eyes.
‘You don’t want any?’ Gregor asked.
‘Frozen, stale bread and moldy cheese? For the fiftieth day in a row?’
Fiftieth? Was that how long it’d been since the last food shipment? Gregor hadn’t been counting, but there was no doubting the food was getting worse and worse, the portions smaller and smaller. The guards had said new supplies were coming any day. As soon as they could mend the railway tracks which had been destroyed in a landslide
a hundred miles away. The only route into and out of the gulag. The only sane route, anyway.
‘It’s not completely frozen yet,’ Gregor said, pushing his thumb into the hard bread. But it would be if it was left out much longer. He’d eaten frozen bread before. Didn’t want to again.
‘You just have it. I’m not hungry.’
‘You could keep it on you,’ Gregor said. ‘For later.’
‘I’m not stuffing bread under my armpit and carrying it around all day.’
‘Alex says it helps,’ Gregor said. ‘The warm moisture actually takes the staleness away after a while, he says.’
Hector chuckled. ‘Oven-fresh flavor, apparently.’
Gregor stifled a laugh too. ‘Shit, I smelled the stuff he took out yesterday. If that’s oven-fresh…’
‘Yeast infection, more like,’ Hector added.
Gregor bit down hard on the bread and by the time he’d chewed it enough that he could actually swallow the dry morsel, his jaw ached. It took him several more minutes to finish the two pieces. The two cubes of cheese went down a little more easily even if he didn’t bother to remove the blue and green spots of mold. Fuck it. Mold was edible, wasn’t it?
By the time he got to the cup of water the liquid inside was already turning slushy. He downed it, sending a renewed, more vigorous shiver across his body as the horribly cold liquid traveled through him.
Not long after and the shouting of the guards told them that the doors were about to be unlocked. Hector and Gregor both got ready. As soon as the locks released, they headed on out into the large open space, the other inmates pouring out of their cells too, nearly a hundred men in total in this block, all of them housed on the ground level. Two other levels rose above them, but the cells up there were empty, had been for some time as far as Gregor knew. Now the upper levels were only used for the patrolling guards, looking down on the prisoners as if they were observing dogs in a fighting pit. Although most recently – a few weeks, anyway – there’d been no trouble here between the inmates, or with the inmates and guards. The only concern on most minds now was survival. Which explained why the men came out of their cells with smiles on their faces, greeting each other gladly, almost with surprise, as though they’d not expected to make it through another night.
But then…
After the initial pleasantries were over and done with, Gregor noticed a hush taking over in the far corner. A group of men stood in a circle, heads bowed, a muted conversation taking place.
Gregor edged toward them. Other men were taking notice too. Gregor looked up to the next level as he moved. Six guards patrolled, rifles dangling lazily. None of them were paying the group any attention.
Hector peeled from the group and strode up to Gregor.
‘Move away,’ Hector said, grabbing Gregor’s arm, but he resisted and stood his ground.
‘What’s happened?’
‘They’re pissed
off and they’re about to get themselves shot, the fucking idiots.’
And just looking at the group Gregor could see, feel, their anger now. Creased faces. Bunched fists. Nods and backslaps here and there as they psyched themselves up. They were planning, plotting.
‘What happened?’ Gregor asked more forcibly.
‘Vlad didn’t make it.’
‘Old Vlad?’
Because there were actually four Vlads here. Young Vlad, Idiot Vlad, Handsome Vlad and Old Vlad.
‘Frozen in his fucking sleep,’ Hector said. ‘Broz woke up next to a damn corpse.’
Gregor opened his mouth to respond but then a ruckus from behind him caused him to sink down and spin around.
Shouting. Banging. Four men rushed about, slamming their metal bedpans against walls, doors. One swiped his bedpan across the back of another inmate’s head. A sucker punch. The poor chump – who was that? – didn’t see it coming and plummeted to the floor.
Other men started shouting too, huddling into groups, some retreated to their cells. The guards yelled warnings…
Gregor spun back the other way. It was all a distraction. Back at the far end the group of angry men rushed up the stairs. Ten, twelve of them, bounding up. The guards didn’t see them until the first of the men raced along the gangway. The frontrunner launched a fist at the trailing guard before he could twist his rifle that way. The inmate carried on past to take on the next, allowing the rest of the rioters to join the melee. Which didn’t work out so well for the first, already unsteady, guard when someone grabbed him, lifted him from his feet and tossed him over the railing.
The guard yelled in panic as he flip-flopped toward the concrete. Gregor winced as the guy landed headfirst. His neck snapped, his body collapsed on top of him.
That was when the gunfire started. Booming, echoing rapid fire. Gregor hunched down, covered his head and ran for cover beneath the overhang. He slid up against the wall and cowered. Bullets zinged all around. Men shouted, yelled, screamed.
But it didn’t take long for the armed guards to retake control, and soon the guards’ yells
became the dominant sound.
‘Hands on heads! Flat on the floor! Faces down! All of you!’
Gregor did so without waiting to be forced. He placed himself on his belly, hands up, but kept his head skewed to the side so he could look out across the atrium.
Most men had complied, only a few stragglers deciding to take a rifle butt to the head first. Gregor’s eyes found Hector’s. His cellmate glared at him with a defiance, an anger he’d not seen before.
Gregor looked away. To the fallen bodies. Just the one guard that he could see. Several inmates, though, lay in pools of their own blood. Pools of blood of their own making, really. Their fight had been rushed. Stupid. Little more than suicide. Perhaps they’d known that but had decided it was worth it. Two fingers up to the system rather than ‘living’ like this.
Gregor’s gaze finally rested inside the cell nearest to him. To the bunk and the unmoving figure there. Glassy eyes stared back at him on a face that was blue from the cold and lack of still-coursing blood.
Old Vlad. Frozen in his sleep.
Gregor bunched his fists, doing everything he could to hold in his anger. To not let it show.
He fully understood the madcap stand those men had just made, even if he didn’t agree with their foolhardy method. But he’d never been resigned to his fate here. He simply knew it’d take more than rushing the guards in a fit of rage to get him out.
He kept his eyes on Old Vlad’s corpse. No way Gregor would suffer that fate. He’d gone through too much to let his life end like that.
So the question for him wasn’t if he’d try to break from this hellhole. It was simply when, and perhaps most importantly, who he could trust enough to help him.
James Ryker opened the balcony door and stepped out into the fresh morning air. The clear sky meant the temperature had dropped from its pleasant high yesterday afternoon and Ryker’s bare torso prickled with goose bumps despite the rays of the rising sun on his skin. He didn’t mind the cold edge, though. The weather here in winter was far from the summer highs but it was a damn sight better than many other places, and the azure sky made him feel relaxed, rejuvenated, anytime of year.
‘Close the door, you’re letting all the heat out!’ Charlotte shouted from the bed.
Ryker stretched up, his hands nearly touching the concrete of the balcony above. He spent a couple more seconds looking out across the view. Not the most impressive from here, really. Charlotte’s modest salary meant she lived well off the most prestigious streets that crammed the coastline not far away in trendy Juan-les-Pins and Cap d’Antibes. The Mediterranean lay around the far edges of those wealthy neighborhoods and if he stood on tiptoes he had just the smallest glimpse of the glistening deep blue water.
But his eyes didn’t rest there but on one of the larger, and more prominent buildings on the peninsula. Le Provencal. A derelict art deco hotel, once visited by the world’s rich and famous. Soon to be again, should the new owners get their wish.
Ryker would be taking a visit down there himself very soon. Even if his time on the southern tip of France had brought him the pleasure of meeting and getting to know Charlotte, getting to know her very intimately, his primary purpose here remained business.
‘James! I said—’
‘I heard.’
He turned and walked back inside and closed the door behind him. He looked over to the bed where Charlotte remained snuggled under the covers, her long, dark hair a mess around her face.
‘Why do you always do that?’ she said, still sounding grumpy though he let it slide. She wasn’t a morning person, that was all.
‘I love the view,’ he said.
‘It’s a shit view. Probably about the worst view in Antibes.’
‘Not from where I’m standing,’ he said to her as he gently pulled on the bottom of the covers. The top end slipped free from her shoulders, momentarily exposing her breasts.
‘Hey!’ she shouted out, yanking the covers back up. ‘Damn, just go and stand out there again or something, will you! Just shut the door this time!’ But even though she’d tried to shout angrily, she couldn’t stop the wide smile from spreading.
He jumped back onto the bed next to her and her body jolted on the mattress, causing her to fall toward him. He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed the top of her head.
‘Why do you always have so much energy?’ she said. ‘You’re supposed to be old.’
‘Ouch,’ he said, even though her words didn’t really sting him at all. Actually, he was only seven years older than she was, but he sat the wrong end of forty now. Nearer to half a century.
She snuggled into him a little and after a couple of minutes he could tell she’d closed
her eyes again and was drifting by the increasing calmness to her breaths.
‘Sleepyhead. It’s nearly eight thirty.’
‘Shit!’
The reaction was almost instantaneous, and she jumped up out of the bed. Ryker stifled a laugh as she zoomed around the room. Into the bathroom. Less than a minute in the shower. Too quick for him to even think about joining her in there. No, he did think about it, but he was still too busy enjoying the thoughts when she rushed out again, skin glistening.
‘I’m supposed to be at the station at nine,’ she said, dropping the towel.
She paused a second and turned and looked at him, and she grew in confidence when she noted the look in his eyes as he took in her nakedness.
‘You could have had all this if you’d woken me earlier,’ she said before she pulled on her underwear.
‘Then I’ll let the cold air in at seven tomorrow, if you like?’
‘Do that and I’ll shoot you,’ she said as she momentarily glanced to her holstered gun on the dressing table. She finished dressing before she picked the weapon up and clasped the belt around her waist, the holster and the gun soon out of sight beneath her neatly pressed suit jacket. All in all, considering she’d taken less than three minutes to get ready, she looked great.
‘What are you doing today?’ she asked him as she ran a brush through her hair.
‘This and that.’
She paused as she looked at him in the mirror. ‘That sounds ominous.’
He shrugged.
‘James. Please just tell me it’s not something that’s going to cause me any more problems?’
He stood up from the bed, moved over to her and put his arms around her waist and gently kissed her neck. ‘Why would I do anything to get you in trouble?’
She pulled away from his grip.
‘Because… even though I haven’t known you very long, I think I do know you.’
She left it at that, and he spent a few moments working the words over in his mind, though he still wasn’t sure exactly how he was supposed to take the comment.
Not long after and he
was in the kitchen pouring some orange juice and she was at the front door right across in the small open-plan space. She glanced back at him, still standing there in his boxers as he checked his phone.
‘I guess you’re staying then,’ she said to him.
‘If I tried to get ready that quickly it’d probably give me a heart attack. I’m old, remember.’
He tapped his heart for effect.
‘Will you be here later?’ she asked.
‘Do you want me to be?’
‘I’ll call you,’ she said. She pulled the door open a few inches. ‘But please… remember what I said. Try not to do anything stupid today. Anything else stupid, I should say.’
She walked out and closed the door without waiting for a response.
By mid-morning the sun had taken away the early morning chill and Ryker walked the twisting, leafy streets of Juan-les-Pins in only his jeans and a light shirt. The cars crammed together along the sides of the tree-lined narrow road and the tall walls of the properties gave little clues as to the wealth and luxury that lay beyond. Much of the area had an understated, old-world vibe. Ryker could see why those with money to spend – from all over the globe – came here.
He took a left at a crossroads to head to a small cluster of shops. Today’s recce was, initially, a bit hit and miss. He had a time and place for this afternoon, but this morning he was simply scoping out, and hoping to get a bit lucky. He hadn’t been so far today, as he’d already spent time inside and outside two other cafes that he knew his target frequented, but he remained undeterred. The peninsula wasn’t that big. He’d make inroads soon enough, whatever happened this morning. ...
