Poe (12 page)

“What about my money purse?” Romee asked.

The older man shot a look across the room at the translator. The woman was standing in the corner, looking as if she wanted to be anywhere else. The man asked her a question, she answered, then he looked at the two arresting officers and barked again.

The taller one pulled Romee’s pouch out of his pocket and handed it to her.

The suited man started talking to the girls. When he finished, he glanced at the translator again.

“Colonel Hubenko apologizes for your…inconvenience. He hopes you will not let this keep you from enjoying rest of stay in Ukraine.”

The colonel said something else.

“If you need anything, please let him know,” the woman translated.

“We’re free to go?” Romee said.

“Yes.”

“We’ve missed our train,” Heike said. “Tell him we’ve missed our train. We were supposed to go to Kiev tonight.”

The translator talked with the colonel for a moment, then said, “We will put you in hotel near train station tonight, compliments of the Ukrainian police. In morning, Colonel Hubenko himself will make sure you are on first train out, private compartment. Is this okay?”

Heike and Romee shared a look.

“Yeah, that will be fine,” Heike said.

“For three, yes?” the woman asked.

“Yes. Our friend is waiting in the station with our bags. She’s probably scared to death.”

“Your friend?” the woman said.

“Yes.”

The translator looked at Alex. “What about you?”

“I still have time to catch my train.”

The woman translated everything to the colonel, who took a moment to yell at the two cops again. Alex was pretty sure she knew what the problem was this time. The cops hadn’t even thought to see if there was anyone else traveling with the girls. The lack of luggage should have been a glaring clue. The colonel was not happy.

They found Anika with their bags right where they had left her. The relief on her face was immense. As she hugged her two friends, Alex strapped on her backpack.

“Hopefully the rest of your trip isn’t quite as adventurous,” Alex said.

Heike pulled away from her friends and eyed Alex gratefully. “We didn’t thank you for chasing that boy.”

“Almost wish I hadn’t,” Alex said, smiling. “You guys take care.”

After hugs and goodbyes, Alex navigated through the station and out the door to her platform. The train to Simferopol was already in the station, waiting.

As she neared her car, a voice said, “Next time you get arrested, make sure it’s when you’re supposed to.”

Cooper was standing on the other side of a large baggage trolley piled high with suitcases.

Alex stopped. “Technically, I wasn’t under arrest.”

“Technically,” he said, smirking, “it isn’t easy to find a police colonel I can bribe on such short notice. You should consider yourself lucky.”

“Thank you.”

“Try not to let it happen again, huh?” He smiled.

“I’ll do my best.”

He touched his forehead as if tipping a hat. “Safe journey.” With that, he headed down the platform toward the station.

“Here’s hoping,” Alex said to herself, then climbed aboard the train.

Crimea

She arrived in
Simferopol without further incident, a few minutes before noon the next day.

The plan was for her to be arrested at 3:30 p.m. outside the domestic terminal at the city’s airport. Having a little time to kill, she grabbed some food. Since it was likely the last good meal she’d have for a while, she left nothing on her plate.

After paying her bill, she found a cab outside and climbed in.

“Airport,” she told the driver.

He looked at her for a second in the mirror before his eyes widened. “
Aeroport
.”

“Yes,
aeroport
,” she said, nodding.

She leaned against the seat, and stared out the window as the city passed by, but her mind was elsewhere. This was her last chance to walk away, to say forget it. All she had to do was tell the cabbie to stop and let her out. But she didn’t move.
Couldn’t
move.

She had no choice.

While Alex was devastated by her mother’s death, her father had reacted with the same stoic fortitude he always displayed. Alex had begun to wonder if he was secretly glad her mother was gone. Then one night, when she couldn’t sleep, she went out to the kitchen to get some water. The light was on in the den, so she assumed her father was up. He often worked late, after all. She didn’t want to talk to him, but there was no way to get to the kitchen without passing the office’s door.

Steeling herself, she continued down the hall, hoping he wouldn’t notice her. As she glanced inside the den, however, she saw he wasn’t there, and his desk, which was usually clean and tidy, was now covered with squares of paper.

No, not paper, she realized, as her curiosity propelled her into the room.

Photographs.

She couldn’t help but pick one up. A snapshot of her mother, cradling a very young Danny.

Alex touched the image, her mother’s hair dark and thick, her creamy brown skin so perfect.

God, she was beautiful.

While Alex had inherited the hair, she had always wished she’d gotten her mother’s darker skin, too. And even half her beauty.

She set the picture down and scanned the others. They were all of her mother.

One by one, she looked at each, the tears growing in her eyes with every memory.

She wasn’t sure how long her father had been standing behind her, but at some point she heard him take in a breath.

She turned with a start. “I’m…I’m sorry,” she said.

Without saying a word, her father put his arms around her and pulled her to him. She cried for what seemed like days. She thought maybe he’d cried, too. And as her tears petered out, so did her strength, and she fell asleep standing there, leaning against him.

When she woke the next morning, it had almost felt like a dream. But she knew from that moment forward that her father was grieving also, and that made getting through each day easier. Her relief, however, lasted only until the morning he left the house and never returned.

There had been no goodbyes, no “I have to go away for a while.”

He was simply there one day and not the next.

The army had said he’d gone AWOL, that he had sold secrets to some foreign organization. Her father? A traitor? Not a chance. He was a good soldier, a great one. Next to his own family, serving his country was the most important thing to him. He was no more a traitor than the commander of the joint chiefs himself.

As the years went by, she held on to that thought even as her anger at him began to blossom.

So many questions only he could answer.

And now, here she was, riding in the back of a cab in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, one step closer to getting those answers.

When the cab reached the airport and pulled to the curb, Alex didn’t enter either of the terminals. Instead she made her way over to the small plaza between the buildings.

It was 3:30 p.m. Her instructions were to find a red-roofed building, something that wasn’t hard to do. It came into view, just beyond the plaza’s diamond-shaped flower beds, the moment she turned the corner. Words in large Cyrillic type were displayed on white beams across the apex of the roof—an advertisement or perhaps an identifier of what was inside. The door to the building was to the right of center, flanked by a pair of windows.

Alex walked casually toward the door. Twenty feet before she reached it, a voice yelled out.

Though she didn’t understand the words, she recognized it as the very same thing the cop at the Odessa train station had shouted at her.

She stopped and looked around, expecting to see the officer who had been bribed to take her into custody, but instead of one cop, there were five. All had pistols pointed in her direction.

She immediately raised her hands in the air. “No need for that. I’m unarmed.”

“Down on ground,” the one on the far left shouted.

She dropped to the ground, her pack heavy on her back.

“Arms, legs out!”

She assumed a spread-eagle position. Apparently her contact had decided to make her capture seem more realistic than planned, and had involved some of his friends. As long as she got where she needed to go, that’s all that really mattered.

One of the men—she couldn’t see which—approached her, and used a knife to cut the straps to her backpack so he could pull it off.

“Hey! That wasn’t necessary,” she said. She didn’t really care about the bag, but a knife that close to her skin was not something she was fond of.

The man dropped the backpack beside her, knelt down, cuffed her wrists behind her, and began a body search. As his hand slipped over her hip and between her legs, she squeezed her thighs together. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Putting on a show was one thing, but she was not about to put up with bullshit like this. She shifted her hips, moving from his touch. He grabbed her and dug his fingers into her thigh.

That did it.

In a sudden twist, she wrapped her legs around him and pulled him to the ground, rolling him onto his back. With an
oomph
he collapsed, and she dug a knee into one of his kidneys. “Don’t you
ever
do that again. To anyone!”

“Step away!” one of the other cops yelled at her in English.

She gave a parting shove of her knee to the downed cop and stood up, arms still cuffed behind her back.

“I’m cooperating,” she said. “That son of a bitch just wanted a little more than I’m willing to give.”

“You funny woman, huh?” the English speaker said as he stepped closer to her.

By now quite a crowd had gathered, and what was supposed to have been a simple—and subtle—arrest was turning into a scene.

“Do you see me laughing?” she asked.

The cop said something to the guy on the ground, who grunted a response, and slowly rose to his feet. Alex eyed him warily as he gave her a once-over before leaning down and picking up her pack.

“You come no problem?” the English speaker asked her.

“Just tell me where to go.”

“Car waiting.”

They formed a rough circle around her, and pushed their way through the crowd to the road that ran in front of the terminals. There, three police cars were parked bumper to bumper. Alex was led to the one in the middle. The cop in front of her opened the backdoor, while the one behind grabbed the top of her head. He pushed her down and through the opening, but not before making sure the top of her head smacked against the doorframe.

She winced as she fell into the seat, and felt blood start to trickle down her scalp. The pain of the blow grew like a wave. She gritted her teeth and shut her eyes to ride it out. Once she opened them again, the car was already pulling away from the airport.

There were two cops in the car with her. The one who’d opened the door was sitting behind the wheel, and the English speaker was looking back at her from the passenger seat.

“Apologies,” he said. “But appearances must be kept up.”

So this was her contact. She glanced at the driver then back to the other man.

He shook his head. “Only me. He not understand English.”

Tempering her response so the driver wouldn’t wonder what was going on, she said, “And your friend back there. The one with the wandering hands. Was that for appearances, too?”

There was a flash in the man’s eyes. Anger? Annoyance? It was hard to tell. “You should be very careful how you speak to me. You are in Crimean system now. I can be friend, or I can make problem.”

Apparently he was a touchy bastard. And an arrogant one as well. But as much as she might’ve liked to slap the attitude right out of him, she knew he was right. She was at his mercy. He could easily forget he’d been paid to make all this happen.

That was the kind of trouble that could lead to her being “lost” in his beloved Crimean system.

Never to be found again.

* * *

T
HEY ARRIVED AT
a big block of a building that screamed municipality. Columns and gray stone and wide stairs leading inside, it could have been picked up and plopped down in almost any country and looked at home.

They parked behind the building and took her in through a basement door. The English speaker said something to his friends, then headed down an intersecting hallway on his own.

The four who were left escorted Alex to an empty, windowless room that was clearly a holding cell. There she was left, her wrists still cuffed.

Minutes passed. Five. Ten.

When the door opened again, a single cop entered, only it wasn’t the English speaker. It was the son of a bitch with the wandering hands.

Oh, joy.

He was carrying a knotted sock full of coins or rocks or something equally hard and heavy. A sap, or this guy’s version of one, anyway. By the look in his eyes, he was anxious to test it out on her skull.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said. “Did you learn nothing?”

He was only a year or two younger than Alex, and had that look of indignant self-importance that was so common among people her age who hadn’t yet tasted real life.

Alex had never been cursed with that disease. Her real life began when her mother died, and continued on through Iraq and the occasional Maryland mean street. She was sure this idiot was used to getting his way, and after failing to feel her up, he now wanted to reestablish his perceived dominance to save face with his buddies.

He took two steps forward, testing her, but she didn’t back off. He slapped the sock against the palm of his free hand, trying to intimidate her.

Without warning, she dropped her head and rushed him, targeting his nose. He turned just enough that she ended up slamming into his cheek instead. She could feel the cut on her head open up again, but gave it no further thought.

The jerk staggered to the side, the side of his face red from the impact. Before he could do anything else, she kicked sideways and caught him in the abdomen right below his sternum.