Traffyck (53 page)

Vakhabov motioned Pyotr, Rogoza, and his personal guard north, across several mounds of sand, so they could speak without interruption.

“Not much farther,” said Pyotr, with disdain. “Those are radiation signs ahead.”

“I see them,” grumbled Vakhabov.

“Are we going to have a conference?” asked Pyotr.

Father Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza, who had remained silent and introspective, suddenly spoke out. “Let us consider,” he said contemptuously. “Which do we export to the trafficking market, and which do we burn alive? Perhaps there is a political way to decide. Or perhaps I should ask for divine help in this question.”

Pyotr watched with interest. He could not have said it better.

Vakhabov’s anger showed in his face, yet he kept his voice even. “I will tell you this, Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza, and also you, Pyotr Alexeyevich Andropov: I, Maxim Vakhabov, will make decisions. You think I come here for amusement? You think I come here, backed by all these men, to join the traffickers?

You are wrong. Although I come from Uzbekistan, my loyalties have always been to Mother Russia. And it is for Mother Russia I come to end this insanity. There is a summit planned in Moscow next year. At the summit, Russia will show its superiority to the Americans, who decree ethical standards for the rest of the world. Trafficking across the borders of Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, and the Czech Republic will suffer at the hands of a new Russian Motherland, protector of children. After this, perhaps Russia will become arbiter of justice rather than the fucking Americans! I have men with cameras, and the world will see young people with vacant eyes. They will recall the troops entering the camps in Germany. But this time, Mother Russia will be the savior!”

Pyotr waited to see if there was more. When Vakhabov looked back to the shouting on the beach, Pyotr spoke to get his attention. “So now it comes down to politics?”

“Of course,” said Vakhabov. “It is always politics.”

Rogoza stepped closer to Vakhabov. “You may work for Russia, with your ragtag men dressed in old Soviet uniforms, but they are mercenaries armed and paid by the Russian Mafia. Therefore, for you, it has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with economics!”

Vakhabov put his face close to Rogoza’s face. “I have something to tell you personally, Vladimir Ivanovich Rogoza.” He motioned back toward the commotion on the beach. “Before all this, my most trusted man brought me a message. He said one of the youngest of the young women has offered to go back to Kiev with you and live at the secret residence at your office. She said she will be much more cooperative than the last visit and do anything you wish. I saw you looking at her earlier.”

Rogoza stared at Vakhabov with both hatred and hope.

Vakhabov turned to his guard. “It will be best to take the Father with us so he can be with his sex slave. I cannot trust him back in Kiev.”

Pyotr wished SBU Deputy Lyashko were also here so the boys he violated in his Kiev apartment could step forward to destroy him.

Vakhabov turned to Pyotr. “You will also come with us.”

Vakhabov began walking back to the others on the beach.

“What about my Chernobyl orphans?” asked Pyotr. “Even the ones without arms or legs or brains might be of economic value in your Kafkaesque world! Have you ever read Kafka?”

Vakhabov turned and slapped Pyotr across the face. But Pyotr stood his ground.

“You cannot take me!” shouted Pyotr. “This is my home! Leave me here, and I will care for the Chernobyl orphans!”

Vakhabov waved his hand dismissively, and the guard pointed his rifle and motioned both Pyotr and Rogoza to follow. To Pyotr, being taken prisoner was unacceptable. It was like the Union being broken apart, like history played back. His name and legacy ruined. But if he were able to escape, if he were able to convince officials in government of his attempts to stop the Russian Mafia, he would become a hero in Ukraine, complete with a statue in one of the parks.

Pyotr knew the peninsula well. Beyond the next mound of sand was a root, and to the side of that root were large trees, then more trees, and then the woods. In spite of the guard yelling for him to stay close, Pyotr wandered inland a few yards, toward the root. He made a show of tripping on the root and yelling as if in pain, as he rolled off to the side. He held onto his leg, groaned, and waited for the guard to come and pull him up. At least they stayed away from their faces and Mariya was able to capture Lena with her stare. Held down, their legs and arms pressed into the sand, she and Lena stared at one another. It was as if they had created an alternate world. Mariya had learned to do this while working in Kiev’s strip clubs and massage parlors, and she tried to convey this to Lena.

Imagine yourself into another reality, Lena. The creature becomes feces flushed away while you stand at the bathroom sink washing your hands. Ignore who they are and what they are because they are nothing
.

It did not always work. It did not work when the creature wanted to kiss. But most times, these creatures did not want to kiss. It was simply mayhem, like the night someone brought in a Rolling Stones recording and they danced, and the audience of creatures became insane and Igor the bouncer gave up…

It ended when Vakhabov came and ordered his men away, kicking at the ones taking their turns. When Vakhabov shouted orders, Mariya’s arms were freed and she reached out across the expanse of sand and squeezed Lena’s hand.

Vakhabov kicked their clothing at them. “Dress!”

Men brought Janos, whose wounded arm was tied with a gray piece of cloth. Men carried Vasily, whose leg was also tied at his wound. Finally, men brought Lazlo, whose mouth bled.

“Take them to a cabin!” shouted Vakhabov. “Secure it! But wait with the fires until we are in the boats.” He selected several of the men who had just raped Mariya and Lena. You men … there, there, and there … put them in the cabin and—”

A man ran up from behind, said something into Vakhabov’s ear.

“Tripped?” yelled Vakhabov. “And then he runs away? How could he run away?”

The man who had brought the news shrugged and turned to point behind him, but Vakhabov hit the man on the back of his head with the butt of his rifle before he could answer.

“Take them, as I said!” yelled Vakhabov, his face red. He turned to his personal guard. “Idiot! We do not have time for Andropov! Send two marksmen to shoot him!”

The guard asked, “And if they do not find him?”

“We still leave! Burn it all down! Every building! Every shed! Every shithouse!”

As soon as Mariya and Lena had dressed, men marched the five of them, carrying Vasily, inland to a compound of cabins. The cabin in which they locked them had high, small windows. As soon as they were thrown to the floor of the cabin, Mariya got up and looked out one of the windows. Men came running with boards, hammers, and nails. They pounded furiously at the door, boarding it up from the outside. Although the windows were high, they began boarding these, and amid the pounding, the inside of the cabin darkened. Mariya, Lazlo, and Lena gathered, inspecting the wounds of Vasily and Janos in the waning light, but also shouting above the pounding, asking one another what they should do. For the first time, Mariya heard panic in Janos’ and even Lazlo’s voices. But then, suddenly, Lazlo stood back and screamed so loud Mariya thought his heart would burst. The words were Hungarian and completely foreign to the situation. Yet, perhaps these were the correct words for the moment.

“Bring on the Gypsies!” After Lena shot the two men who raped the girl in the nightdress behind the bunkhouse, after they took Lena away, Nadia stayed put in the hiding place within the bushes near the bunkhouse as long as she could. But soon, several men stripped their two dead comrades down to their underwear and put their bodies into the nearest bunkhouse. After this, they ran to the beach because more shots erupted there.

Despite Lena’s warning to stay hidden, Nadia ran into the woods. And when the sun came up and a breeze blew, Nadia made her decision. Lena had suggested the two of them run away. Perhaps they could sneak around the fence to the west or figure out how to disable the electricity feeding the fence. This had been the plan … the two of them escaping together.

Everyone in the compound, even the young men on the other side of the peninsula where Ivan ruled, had been collected. Coming down the path behind the parade of Ivan’s boy soldiers with their hands behind their heads, men soldiers carried bundles of rifles. Nadia witnessed it all from her perch in a hardwood tree she had climbed at the edge of the woods. It was a particular tree she knew had thick foliage within which she could hide.

It had been simple for the soldiers to collect young people from the bunkhouses because of the sleeping pills. But Nadia and Lena did not take pills. Instead, they dropped them down between the bunkhouse floorboards.

As Nadia waited in the tree, she considered her age. Eighteen … she was eighteen, even though she knew she appeared younger. Why would she think of this now? It never seemed important. Especially after the men at the mountain lodge drugged her and awakened her and drugged her again. It never seemed important after the insides of the men had been blown onto her hands and arms and face and … everywhere. In the mountain lodge, the deaths had no purpose. But now Lena had shown her death could have purpose.

Nadia carefully climbed down the tree and began searching along the path in the woods. She hoped a rifle might have been dropped somewhere, or perhaps a knife. The path from the main compound to the south compound was well worn, and she stayed off to the side. Back in the woods the breeze was diminished to a whisper at the tops of the trees. And then, suddenly, there was another whisper.

“Nadia.”

She crouched down, startled. Then she looked up.

“Nadia.”

“Guri!”

Guri threw a shovel to the ground from the tree he was in and climbed down. She told Guri what she had seen, and Guri told Nadia what he had seen. They were a pair, the two of them grabbed from the streets of Kiev where they lived the street life, stealing to survive. Sometimes, when desperate enough, convincing idiot men to come into their alleyway, where they had a club or a shovel hidden.

“They are all at the beach,” said Nadia.

“Not all,” said Guri.

“They took Lena.”

Guri stared at her and held his shovel more tightly. “I saw Lena.”

“Where?”

“They locked her with strangers in one of Ivan’s bunkhouses. They also locked the Chernobyl cripples in another bunkhouse. The men gathered gasoline. They will burn them.”

“What can we do?”

“Come,” said Guri, grabbing her hand and running back the way she’d come, away from where Lena was trapped.

“Where are … we going?” whispered Nadia, between breaths.

“The shed behind Pyotr’s cabin … They broke the lock and took gas cans … They left tools.”

The boy and girl ran past Pyotr as he made his way through the woods. Vakhabov’s men had chased him several hundred meters. Both had paused to take shots at him, but he was already far away. He had lost the men by circling the compound and avoiding the paths. He was still short of breath from his run, but when he saw the boy and girl streak past, he went after them, creating a plan as he ran.

He saw they carried shovels and a hammer and what looked like a large screwdriver. He assumed they had escaped like him and gathered these for weapons. He recognized them. They were the recent street urchins from Kiev who had come by way of Ivan Babii’s pornography operation in Romania. He would help them escape!

How? Not difficult. Perhaps hit the boy on the head because he was vocal. The girl could suffer another wound, perhaps a fall. He would take them to the SBU guardhouse near the village of Opachychi, convince one of the guards to take him along with the pair to Ivankiv for treatment at the hospital. Or hit them both over the head and tell the guards they are contagious and take them in the truck alone…

But there was a problem. The girl, Nadia, turned back and saw Pyotr running after them. She told the boy, Guri. They ran faster and Pyotr thought his lungs would burst. Instead of zigzagging, they ran straight, onto a path, and soon, so soon because of his earlier run from Vakhabov’s men, Pyotr Alexeyevich Andropov, named after Peter the Great, ruler of the Russian Empire, collapsed on the ground gasping for breath and clutching his burning chest.