Psycho Within Us (The Psycho Series Book 2) (6 page)

Zakhar shook his head.  “I have nothing more to do with Northeast Siberian Shipping
.  Nothing besides a little bookkeeping.”

The smile never wavered, and neither did his knowing look.  “Ya know, it’s an interesting fact: every year about nine million shippin’ containers enter U.S. ports, and about as many leave.  Only about five percent of those are inspected before they are unloaded, even after 9/11 and all the
fears of smuggled uranium started up.  But it’s easier to detect enriched uranium hidden inside a container—a good Geiger counter can do that—but finding small children stuffed inside them…”  He let the sentence drop.

“I’ve never hurt any children—”

“Liar liar, pants on fire.”

“I swear to you, I’ve never—”

The gunman put a finger to his lips.  “
Shhhh
.  I’m not here for the child, Comrade Ogorodnikov.”  A moment of indulged relief, which helped to calm him, gave him hope.  His fingertips were still on the gun’s grip.  “I don’t care about any o’ the people you’ve hurt, or the children you choose to diddle.  Honestly, that’s none o’ my beeswax.”  He sniffed.  “But I made a promise to Dmitry Ankundinov.  I told him I’d kill his daughters.  Only, they weren’t in Derbent like he said.  They’ve moved somewhere else, with some other family.  I learned this after a very considerable, and, uh…
bloody
interrogation.”

“It was you?”  Zakhar still couldn’t believe it.  He had received warnings, from his people in Moscow and his relatives in Chelyabinsk.  They’d told him about a revenge killing, something they believed was associated with “bad blood” between their families and some other foreign families. 
It’s not, though
. 
It’s just him
.  “You burned them?”

The gunman elected not to answer this directly.  “
It seems the Ankundinovs in Derbent heard about Dmitry’s downfall in the States, and they had a hunch to hide much of his close family—mainly from Interpol and other agencies, not from me.  Still, the results are the same.  They’re gone.  All I wanna know is, where did the
vory
move his family?”

“You…want to kill his daughters?” he said, astonished.

“Don’t sound so appalled.  What the fuck do you care?  You’ve got someone’s son or daughter locked up in your goddam basement.  Now, I can kill you where you stand, an’ this’ll be the last time you ever visit this lodge. 
Or
, you could give me Dmitry’s daughters, an’ you get to stay here with whomever you’ve got locked up down below.”  He shrugged.  “Whattaya say,
comrade
?  A child for a child?”

Was it really that simple?  Just give over Dmitry Ankundinov’s
family and that would be the end of it?  Zakhar wasn’t truly conflicted on the decision—after all, he didn’t know Dmitry at all, and had only ever met the Ankundinovs during a few shareholder meetings here and there throughout the years—but would giving the family up really save him now?  “What if I told you that I don’t know where they are—”

“Then I’d say you’re about as useless as an asshole
on my face,” he said matter-of-factly, raising the gun.

Zakhar held up his left hand, still keeping
his right hand close to his Colt, inching more over the grip. 
Has he noticed yet?
he wondered.  “Wait, hold on!  Please! 
Prastite!
  I’m…I’m sorry.  I’m sorry, but I don’t know where they are, but I
can
tell you about the others!”

“What others?”
  There was a trick of the light in that moment.  Something from the fire, deepening shadows that carved hard lines in the gunman’s face.

“Th-the others…” he said, beginning to stutter.  “
They m-might know where to find the rest of Ankundinov’s family.  They’re the ones…the ones that the
vory
worked with first, when the
vory
first came to my family with the business proposition.  That’s how my father always told it—”

“All right, shut up.  I’m going to ask again, and slowly.  Who—are—the—others?  Names.  I function on names.”

“
N-ni znaju
…that is, I don’t know their names—”

“Then how does this help me—”

“—b-because I kn-know their faction!  Eh, how you say, their affiliation?”

“What, like a club or group name?
  A gang?”

“
Da, da
,” he said hurriedly.  “A gang.”

“What’s the name
?”

Zakhar swallowed once more.  “
At-ta Biral.”

The gunman reached into his left pocket, but never took his gun or his eyes off of Zakhar.  He produced an iPhone,
one that looked familiar to Zakhar.  It took a second for him to realize it was his.  “What’s your code for gettin’ into this thing?”

“Eh…eh…one-four-four-two.”

The gunman punched it in, then tapped a few keys on the touch-screen.  “What was that word?  Atta…?”

“At-ta Biral.”

“Spell it.”  And so Zakhar did.  The gunman punched in those letters.  Zakhar’s right hand was now just about fully wrapped around the grip.  He was ready to pull the Colt when the intruder looked up at him.  “Eight cats?  It says here
at-ta biral
translates in one o’ the Bangladeshi dialects as ‘eight cats’.  You pullin’ my leg, Zak?”  He gave Zakhar an austere look, glanced down at his gun, clearly saw his hand on the gun, but said nothing.

Unable to admit to raping children, it seemed Zakhar also could not acknowledge going for his gun, even when he was caught red-handed.  “N-no.  They are, eh, they are the At-ta Biral, the ‘Eight Cats’ of Bangladesh.”

“Bangladesh, huh?”  He looked back at the iPhone’s screen, then lowered it and tossed it onto the couch.  “You don’t wanna go for that gun, big fella.”  Zakhar froze, becoming the very quintessence of a mannequin.  “Tell me about these Bangladeshi boys.  The Eight Cats, ya say?  What are they, human traffickers like yourselves?  Heroin?  Prostitution?  A bit o’ all three, be my guess.  That’s how it works, right?  Steal them, get them doped up, turn them out on the streets, and keep shuffling them around, place to place, an’ before long they don’t even know where they are, where they came from, or what their names are?”  He jerked his head towards the hallway.  “Is that where ya got your new stock?  That how the Eight Cats keep ya satisfied?  They send you a new toy every so often to appease you?  You know what, don’t answer that, just take your goddam hand off that gun.  Slowly, like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.”

For a moment, Zakhar didn’t believe he had the strength to just remove it.  The gun seemed clamped to his hand, and his hand to it.  It was his lifeline, his last chance out of this.  He couldn’t…he wouldn’t…

But he did.  Slowly, and like molasses in a Siberian Christmas.

“Turn around,”
the gunman said.  Zakhar obeyed as though in a dream.  And could it be a dream?  Could it?  He’d always assumed that if he was found out, it would be police and sirens and the media snapping pictures of him.  Not this.  Never this.  What
was
this?  “Kneel.”  Zakhar obeyed, as a robot might do, the commands registering with a programming deeply embedded while everything else—the firewalls keeping others out, the stubborn administrator guarding all the entrances—was rebooted.  “Put your hands behind your head.”  Zakhar obeyed.  “Cross your feet.”  Zakhar obeyed.

For a few moments, the lodge was engulfed in silence.  It seemed the wind had even died down a bit.  The radio had gone all staticky, and mostly silent.  Zakhar listened as, behind him, the gunman just hummed to himself.  He caught a few words being sung.  “This tainted love you’ve given…I’ve give
n all a boy could give you…”  He hummed a few more bars and moved around behind Zakhar.  Perhaps checking windows?  “Song’s been stuck in my fucking head all day.  Like it’s on a loop.  Don’t you hate that, getting a song stuck in your head?”

Zakhar said nothing.  What was the right answer?  Was there a right answer?
  So much was racing through his mind in that moment.  The signs he’d ignored.  His own elongated footprints in the snow leading up to his cabin—
He followed in my footsteps
.  But when had the man come inside?  How long had he been stalking Zakhar?  Had he waited for him to put down the rifle?  How much had been calculated?

He heard the gunman approaching from behind, slowly, slowly.  Then, all at once, the Colt was snatched from
Zakhar’s holster and the gunman took a step back.  “Stand up.”  Zakhar obeyed.  At least, he tried.  His legs had turned to water.

He started weeping.

“Oh, fuck, you’re gonna cry now?”  The gunman sighed.  “Look, I gotta be outta here in like ten minutes.  So could you just not…?”

“P-p-please…please, I have money!  Lots of it!  You see what I can afford!  I can pay you!  I can pay you enough to…to…to fix your face!” he rushed to say.  “T-to run away from these people at Interpol!  Enough m-m-money to find these men from Bangladesh!  I can gi—”

“
Money
to find them,” said the gunmen.  “Meaning you don’t actually have anymore info about
where
they are, and you don’t know
how
to find them?”

“I-I-I didn’t mean—”

“I’m just tryin’ to be specific here.  Do you know where these men are, right now, right this very instant, or not?”

“N-not right this—”

“So you’re tryin’ to buy yourself some time.”

“N-n-n-no—”

“No?  You’re not trying to buy time?  You don’t wanna live?”

“I-I mean
da!  Da!
 
Yes!
  I mean…I can help you.  I can…I can help you.” 
Remember your training
, Zakhar told himself. 
Breathe
. 
Just breathe, and stay calm
. 
Remember your training
. 
You were a soldier
.  Zakhar’s tears stopped at once, he dammed them up and bit his tongue to reinstate control.  He listened to the gunman take a few footsteps around to his right side, then around to his left.  “Th-there’s money.  Thousands of rubles in my drawer, as well as other currencies.  U.S. dollars, too!”

“Which drawer?
  Where?”

“My armoire,” he said, breathing a sigh of relief. 
I have him thinking rationally
.  “Top drawer.  It’s in a large steel suitcase.”

“In case you eve
r had to hit the road fast, huh?”

“Yes…yes, it’s true.  Everything you’ve said.  It’s all true.  But you said you don’t care about the
merchandise, so you can take the money.  It’s all yours.” No more stuttering now.  Zakhar was back in control, and he believed the gunman was on track, too.  His tone sounded more equitable now.

“Steel suitcase.  Top drawer.”

“
Da
.”

More pacing from behind. 
Then, the gunman started speaking again.  “Ya know, in Derbent, I got a hold of this one fucker named Andrei.  Andrei Ankundinov,” he laughed.  “He wasn’t a brother to Dmitry or anything, not even blood, but he was family through marriage some kinda way.  Anyhow, Andrei was into boostin’ cars, like me.  He’s the one I approached first when I started to peg which Ankundinovs were which—they’re not quite like Johnsons or Joneses over there in Derbent, but the last name is popular enough.  I hooked up with Andrei, found out he was an alcoholic, an’ I know the quickest way to an alcoholic’s heart is to buy the rounds, drive him home an’ don’t tell the rest of his family.

“So I did just that, an’
enough times that he introduced me to some o’ his pals.  In less than two months, I’d already met everyone involved in Northeast Siberian Shipping, even if I hadn’t shaken their hands.  Got invited to a poker game—that was the first time I heard your name bein’ tossed around.  Along with a bunch o’ other bullshit about La Eme and The Court of Lepers.  But I took note, and kept playin’ my cards.  Later that night, though, Andrei was all set to head to a neighborhood outside o’ town, to do a dead-drop and a pickup for some cats owed him and his family money.  That night, as he was hopping in his Jag, Andrei said, ‘You come with me, Yank.’  That’s what they called me for the three months I was in Derbent: The
Yank
.

“I rode with him outside o’ town, and this is when I made my move.  See, it’s not always about rushing the moment, or trying t
o force a moment to happen.  Nah, see, sometimes it’s about
waiting
for that right moment.  This was that night.  This was that moment.  Andrei was shitfaced drunk, I mean just fuckin’ hammered, and so I took the wheel for most o’ the drive.  I pulled over under the pretense that I needed to take a piss, an’ I knew he wouldn’t argue.”  Behind Zakhar, the gunman continued to pace.  “So we get out, we both take a piss, and then I smash the back of his head with the butt of my Beretta.  He was so drunk he went down like a daisy.

“
An hour later, Andrei wakes up upside-down, tied up by his ankles by some cords in his trunk, hanging from a tree.  He was confused as well, o’ course, and I just kept beating him with my pistol.  Like a fuckin’ piñata, get it?  I’m just hammering away.  I took a few shots at him from ten feet away, an’ I intentionally missed.  An’ he’s screamin’ an’ screamin’,” said the gunman, laughing.  “He pissed himself!  You ever see a man hanging upside-down and pissin’ down on his own face?  Comical don’t begin to describe it!”