A Door in the River (20 page)

A man had been at the airport in Toronto, in the arrivals area, holding a sign with her name on it. She’d been very impressed. “Was this Matthieu’s doing?” she’d asked him in English as he opened the limo door.

“Of course,” the man had said.

“Such a good man Matthieu is,” she said in her still-rudimentary English.

As he drove her away to her fate, she could not have known that the man – whom she would learn to call Earl in the coming weeks – was driving her far from her supposed destination.

She had suffered greatly in the ten weeks she’d spent in the underground rooms, but nothing had preyed on her mind more savagely than not knowing if Matthieu was the person she’d thought he was. And it had been
his
memory that had kept her going all this time!

She pushed herself off the bed and walked hunched to the bathroom. What wouldn’t she do for a nice bathroom, with a warmed tile floor and a bidet. Oh god, a bidet would be a blessing, better than a cold bottle of rosé, like Matthieu had promised her the first night they were in Paris together.

She’d chosen this rotten motel for a reason. She’d wanted to see it again. This was the place that Earl had taken her to, when he’d driven her from the airport. It was still there:
Dear Room 9, check-out is 11 a.m. Thank You. The Management, Forty Winks Motel, Kehoe River
. Room 9. Where the horror of her situation first became clear to her.

“Good luck,” Earl had said to her, the same neutral tone in his voice that he’d had in the car when he’d informed her that she was being taken to her dormitory. He closed her in this empty room and told her to wait. Then, five minutes later, the door had opened and a powerful-looking, hard-looking man had stepped into the room.

Over the next few days, she remained in the motel room and the man came to see her. He told her to call him
Bochko
, which meant “father” in Ukrainian. But this was not a Ukrainian man. He was from this side of the ocean. He was strangely beautiful, and his beauty made him more terrifying to her. He began to break her as if she were an animal, coming to her unannounced at all hours of the day. If she resisted him, he struck her; if she wept, he would close his hand around her throat and choke the tears off. When she had stopped struggling, he trained her to please him, and to do it without being asked, and to pretend to enjoy what was done to her. By the end of the fourth day, she was broken and living in a horror-filled dream, a nightmare. He
called her Kitty, and she did not correct him. That would be her name here. Larysa was gone.

She’d never once in her life been struck by another human being. An only child, she’d never had a sibling to beat up or be beaten up by. The blows stunned her. Later, in the mirror, she saw the weeping wounds on her face. There were bruises all over her legs and arms. When she washed her face, the basin ran red with her blood.

She was not allowed to sleep. Bochko was insatiable. He never slept, it seemed to her, was always ready to go at her. He did everything, even things she had once liked, and at every opportunity, if she flagged or became inward, he would remind her what the consequence was. Enjoying him meant moving her body, begging him for more, and when she could not do it, he punished her. When, on the morning of the third day, he appeared looking freshly bathed, she had begged him to kill her.

He had lifted her chin to bring her face to him, and his expression was sad and compassionate. “My darling,” he said. “Do not despair! Transformation is painful! Imagine how it feels to push your way out of your cocoon, out of your egg? Your wings damp, your eyes blind, your stomach empty? Even the sparrows, who are nothing compared to you, fall before they fly.”

At six on the third night, a woman had appeared with a tray. There was a bowl of pasta with two large meatballs
on it and a glass of water. “Eat,” said the woman without looking at Larysa. She’d spoken with an accent she recognized and Larysa answered her in Russian.
I don’t want to eat. I want to get away
. But the woman had merely repeated the English word, “Eat,” and pointed at the food.

Fear did not cancel out her hunger. She would have to eat to survive, to overcome. Larysa ate. The other woman was thin and her skin was sallow, as if she were starving. She sat the entire time facing away from Larysa.

“Vindow,” she heard, and the other woman was standing by the curtained window.

“What?”

“Vindow,” the woman said.

Larysa just stared at her. “I don’t know what you want.”

The woman crossed the room. “Door.”

“Yes, that’s a door.
What are you doing
?” she asked in Russian.

“
I have to learn English
.”

“
So … you come here to feed me and I’m supposed to teach you English?
”

“
Please, I don’t know when he is coming. If he catches us speaking anything but English, there will be a punishment
.”

“
I’ve had his punishments. Fuck him. And I don’t know much English, anyway
.”

“
You know more than I do! Look at me. This is punishment. I would not listen. I live in a dark room, no lights at all, and I eat nothing. When I faint, I’m woken with water and a piece of bread. When I think I have finally died of hunger, they wake me again. But one day, they will forget me in there
.”

“
What did you do?
”

“
I would not smile. With the men. I could not. I was a virgin in Saint Petersburg!”

Larysa had no idea what to think.

“He will have us both today. It is very popular, two girls
.”

Larysa went to the girl and held her. It was surely grounds for grave punishment, to be held, but the girl sank into her and began to weep.

“
Today he gave me breakfast. So I’d have strength
,” she said.

There was a bag of apples that Earl had brought for between her meals. She was still in Bochko’s good books, obviously: they were feeding her and she had chosen to take what was offered. She’d been a vegetarian at home, but here she would need her strength, and she ravenously ate the fast-food hamburgers and pastries they brought her, gulped down the bottles of water and the coffee, which was good coffee, and the apples. She offered the girl one now, and her eyes fell on it like it was a bar of gold.

“Apple,” said Larysa.

“Apple,” said the girl.

“My name is Larysa.”

The girl looked fearfully at her. “No.”

“Yes. My name is Larysa.”

“Name is Kitty. My name is Timmy.”

“What is your real name?”

“My name is Timmy.”

Larysa reached for the apple and took it away. The girl smiled shyly.

“My name is Tania.”

“Tania, I am Larysa.”

She gave her back the apple. “But you call me Timmy, I call you Kitty. Kitty, we talk English.”

“Okay,” said Larysa. “Tania has been brave.”

“
I don’t understand
.”

“
You have been brave
.”

“
I have only been alive. That is all I am
.”

“Brave,” Larysa said in English.

“Brave,” said the girl called Tania, biting the apple.

She washed her face. It had been twenty-four hours since she’d put the knife in Terry Brennan’s back. She’d bought a paper the last time she was out, and so now she knew it was Sunday, August 14. She found a station on the television that reported the local news, and she was the lead story on every channel. They had a sketch of her now, and although she didn’t think it looked like her, it was enough to draw attention. Every hour she spent here regaining her strength was another hour forces were marshalling against her. She was going to have to be back on the move tomorrow, no matter how she felt.

3

Monday, August 15

] 24 [

Past midnight

“My name is Cherry,” the girl said. “You must do what you like.” She moved toward him, her hands already busy with his belt buckle. He put his hands on top of hers.

“Not yet,” he said. He didn’t want to break character in here if he could avoid it. Instinctively, he knew he was alone now, as alone as this girl was, buried somewhere underground in an unmarked place. Hazel was probably already dispatching the backup that would get him and this girl killed. And anyone else who was trapped down here with them. He felt sick with rage, beginning to process the information they’d drawn their wrong conclusions from.
Not drugs
. “Dance for me,” he said.

He moved to the couch and sat, and Cherry stood in front of him, naked, and began to move her hips. Her
arms were dead at her sides. “I dance,” she said, and the look on her face expressed that it was as bad waiting to be raped as it was to be raped.

“Just keep dancing. Fifteen minutes of dancing.”

She stopped moving very suddenly and looked toward the door. It remained closed. She came to him. “You must like me. I please you. You send me away, Bochko will come.”

“Bochko.”

“Just tell me what I do. I do it good.”

“How many girls are here?” She was working his buckle again.

“Two. Three.”

Yes, two now, he thought. That was who Kitty was. The third. He pushed her face away from his zipper. “No,” he said. “I don’t like that.”

“
Please
,” she appealed. “Cameras see you unhappy. Bochko
come
.”

He hadn’t thought of cameras. He grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her up to standing. He pushed her backwards against a wall and stood very near to her. He pushed against her and put his mouth under her ear.

“I’m police,” he said quietly. She stiffened beneath him. He held her hands down between their bodies. “I’m here to help you. How many men are here? How many guns?”

She grabbed his hair and pulled him away, spinning him off the wall and pushing him so hard against the bed that he thought he was going to have to defend himself. But
then she had raised his feet and she was taking his shoes off. Her eyes told him he’d better cooperate. His buckle was still undone and she tugged his pants off and clambered on top of him. She kissed the base of his throat and spoke quietly and direly into his skin. “We both die, you
polis
. Both. You want?”

“No,” he murmured.

“You fuck me.” She began to unbutton his shirt, and he put his mind in neutral and focused on not getting them both shot. The girl helped him remove his shirt. How old was she? She looked nineteen. Perhaps even twenty. Maybe not. He prayed she was at least eighteen.

There was a hammering at the door. “Hey! What’re you sittin’ on the couch for?” came Plaskett’s voice. It had taken him less than one minute to get from wherever he could see them on his monitor to the room. That was all the lead-time Wingate would ever have here.

“We’re just getting to know each other,” Wingate said.

“Nothing to know, Buddy. Just get in and out and fill out a customer appreciation form. What’s the hold-up?”

Probably there were angles on the whole room. There was no hiding. “I just couldn’t believe how fucking hot she was,” he said as confidently as he could, and squeezing his fists together as he pulled the covers back. “Can I have some privacy now, though?”

“Well, get going.”

“Come,” said the girl impatiently. “Take off. All.”

The thought that he
had
to get out of there – and immediately – was competing with the necessity to remove his clothing. If there was a signal coming from the device in his now-shucked shoes, he wasn’t sure it was being picked up. The limit was seven metres, and the tunnel on the way to this part of the compound – the house – had gradually declined at least another five feet. It was possible no one was coming.

He would never be quite so naked in his life. He stood and took his socks off and threw them away. The girl had already tossed his shirt onto the couch. He went to the bed in his underwear, but she stopped him and slipped a finger into the back of his waistband. “Cameras,” she reminded him. “Fuck and live.”

She was going to find out exactly how impossible that was going to be, given all the circumstances.

He got into the bed and she came in after him, drawing the covers back for them both and then covering their bodies. She pushed him onto his back and lowered herself onto him, finding a discreet way to keep them on the safe side of intimate. He was grateful to her for whatever judiciousness she was now showing in her actions atop him. His forehead poured sweat. “I move, you stay still,” she said, lowering herself to kiss him.

“I won’t do anything.”

“You will be okay.” Her face came down beside his ear, and he felt the slow gyric motions of her body over his
thighs as she enacted their travesty of lovemaking. She kissed his mouth and then along his chin, and she settled her mouth below his ear. The unbidden scurrying feeling in his gut that came with her mouth against his neck only confirmed the absolute absurdity of his situation.

She said, “My name is Katrina Volkov. I come from the city of Elizavetgrad, in Ukraine. I win a beauty contest, I fly to Montreal for Worlds. Next thing, I am here. They drug me. Put me in a van. Three months ago.”

“Tell me who Kitty is.”

“Kitty is dead.”

“No. Kitty is alive.”

“Alive? Ha.”

“Shh,” he said, and he held her close to his body. “Do you know how she got out? Did you know Henry Wiest?”

Someone hammered on the door. “Five minutes.”

Cherry suddenly threw herself back, whipping her hair around in a circle, and she began making animal noises, pretending to revel in her pleasure. He now saw how very great the cruelty of this crime was. He pulled her back down to him and flipped her over, pushed her back against the pillows. She looked startled for a second and then smiled at him. Such a look of gratitude. He was going to save her.

She pulled him down to her, as if to kiss him, but she put her mouth against his ear. “Kitty is alive?”

Her breath was hot. “Yes. She’s killed two men.”