Fort Morgan (37 page)

“
Either do it or don’t do
it,” Celia said to herself. “Don’t linger in the
middle.”

With a nod to herself, Celia drove a half a
block and parked the car. She jogged back to where Delphie was
trying to get into the car.

“
The kids are in here!”
Delphie said.

“
Kids!?” Celia’s voice
rose with concern. “There are children in there?”

“
Your employees don’t have
places to leave their kids,” Delphie said in even tones.

Celia gave Delphie a wry look.

“
I can’t get in!” Delphie
said with a tug on the door. “You have to do that thing you do with
doors!”

Celia sighed. She might not have full-blown
psychokinetic skills, but she and her then-boyfriend Sam had spent
years perfecting her ability to get into old cars. She reached out
with her mind. Focusing all of her energy and attention, she
visualized the lock. One forced-out breath, and the passenger door
lock popped up. Before Delphie could open the door, a tiny hand
reached from the back seat to push the button down.

“
What was that?” Celia
asked.

“
There’s a little boy in
the back seat,” Delphie said. “He was told to keep the car locked.
He’s very frightened but is more terrified of having to go back to
his mother. He’s trying to keep his sister quiet so they don’t have
to live with their mom.”

Celia scowled.

“
You’re sure this is the
guy?” Celia asked.

“
He’s an idiot,” Delphie
said. “Even if he’s not, these kids need our help, and you need to
start your school. That’s your destiny, and you know
it.”

“
I. . .” Celia
opened her mouth. “What?”

“
Listen, this kid loves
Coca-Cola,” Delphie said. “I’m going to get a soda from the corner
to bribe him to open the door. You keep working on him.”

Delphie gave Celia a nod before turning in
place and walking down the sidewalk. Celia squinted after her
friend. Delphie hated going into new places, especially little
stores. All of the ghosts rushed forward to talk to her, and she
got overwhelmed. There’s no way Delphie would go to a store by
herself. Celia was being manipulated. She turned to look at the
sedan at the same moment the little boy was looking at her.

“
Go away,” the boy
said.

That was enough for Celia to fall completely
in love with the little boy.

“
No,” Celia said. “I’m not
going away. Not now, and not for a long, long time.”

The boy’s face was almost entirely blue
eyes. They blinked at her.

“
Will you open the door
for me?” Celia asked in a tone that would encourage him to do what
she asked. “I’m here to help.”

The little boy just blinked at her. Celia
sighed and unlocked the door again. The little boy pressed the
button down.

“
Why, hello,” a man’s
voice came from the sidewalk. Celia turned to see her husband Sam.
“What’s a gorgeous lady like you doing here?”

“
I’m trying to get these
kids out of the car!” Celia said. “One of our employees left them
here because he didn’t have anywhere else to bring
them.”

“
Horrible,” Sam said. He
leaned over to look at the boy, who blinked at him. “You
tried. . .?”

Celia unlocked the car door causing the
locking nob to shoot up. The little boy pressed it down.

“
I see,” Sam said with a
laugh.

“
What are you doing here?”
Celia asked.

“
Delphie told me you
needed my help,” Sam said and pointed toward the work
site.

“
She told me she was going
for soda,” Celia said.

They had both been manipulated.

“
So what do we do?” Celia
asked.

“
Simple,” Sam
said.

He raised his eyebrows in a confident “I’ve
got this” and took a candy bar from his pocket. He pressed it
against the window. The lock shot up, and the door opened a little
bit.

“
Nash?” Sam asked. He held
the candy bar out to the little boy. “This is my wife, Celia. She’d
like to help your sister.”

The boy grabbed the bar and began stuffing
it down.

“
She won’t stop crying
today, Mr. Sam,” the little boy said with his mouth full of
chocolate.

“
Mr. Sam?” Celia
asked.

Sam nodded to Celia.

“
Why don’t we let Ms.
Celia help?” Sam said. The boy looked at Celia for a minute. “She’s
really good with kids. I even let her raise mine.”

The boy looked at Celia for a long minute
before he nodded. The boy held up his arms, and Sam lifted him from
the car. Celia climbed in the back seat, where the little girl was
strapped to a car seat. She unhooked the child and passed her to
Sam. The little boy was sitting on the hood of the car, and the
daughter was snuggling in Celia’s arms when they heard
footsteps.

“
Hey!” A young man raced
down the sidewalk. “Those are my kids!”

~~~~~~~~

Tuesday morning — 10:17 a.m.

“
You want to know about me
and the gulag?” Ivan looked genuinely surprised.

Sissy nodded.

“
Sissy wanted to know how
you became her dance teacher,” Sandy said. “Delphie shared her
experience with my dad and Seth.”

Even though Delphie was having breakfast
with Seth and his new wife, Ava, Sandy gestured to where Delphie
usually sat. Ivan nodded and glanced at Abi, who was standing next
to Sissy. She smiled.

“
I wish I had been here,”
he said. “I don’t know how that happened.”

“
We haven’t gotten to the
details yet,” Sandy said with a conspiratorial nod. “But I’m sure
we’ll pry it out of Delphie soon. Would you like to be here when we
do?”

“
Oh. . .” Ivan
gave a little shrug. “It doesn’t matter so much.”

He glanced at Sissy.

“
Maybe when you are well,
you can tell me the whole story,” Ivan said.

Sissy smiled and nodded. She groaned at the
pain caused by her actions.

“
Can you tell us about the
gulag and getting rescued by Seth?” Sandy asked.

“
I can tell you what I
know,” Ivan said with a shrug. “I don’t know everything, but I know
what I know.”

Sandy nodded.

“
I was ten when Soviet
Union started to dissolve,” Ivan said. “My mother and father were
born in Lithuania but moved to St. Petersburg so that I could
dance. With the end of communism, my mother and father went home to
a free Lithuania, leaving my sister and me in St. Petersburg with
my mother’s aunt.”

“
What was she like?” Sandy
asked.

“
I have no idea,” Ivan
snorted a laugh. “I only cared about ballet. My whole world was in
ballet and my sister in her schooling. We rotated in and around my
aunt’s house. She kept us fed and clothed, and she made sure we met
the right people.”

Ivan shrugged.

“
Democratic Russia was
formed when I was sixteen,” Ivan said. “I was already signed at the
Bolshoi. My sister was in the best private school. We spent summers
with our parents, who were so happy. But. . .”

Ivan nodded.

“
The rise of Democracy
brought about the rise in the Bratva,” Ivan said. He wagged his
head side to side. “Bratva has been around since the days of the
tsars. But suddenly, there is not government. Everything is Bratva.
The man you call ‘Otis’ was at the center of everything. I knew him
from growing up at the Bolshoi.”

As if he’d told them something significant,
he nodded.

“
Ballet was everything to
me,” Ivan said. “Is everything to me. I didn’t pay attention to
anything but ballet. Turns out, my aunt was involved in the Bratva,
and soon Otis’s sons had taken over. My aunt was killed. My sister
was forced into prostitution, and I became principal
danceur
and
spy.”

Ivan’s face was etched with pain. He took
off his clear light-protecting glasses to rub his eyes. He didn’t
speak for a while. Finally, clearing his throat, he nodded.

“
I was twenty-four when it
all came apart,” Ivan said. “The government was cracking down on
corruption, and the Bolshoi was part of the investigation. My
sister died, my mother died, and I was sent to gulag for being
Bratva.”

“
Was it awful?” Sissy
asked.

“
Yes,” Ivan said. “The
gulag was in the farthest most north of Russia. There were no
fences and few guards. The vast frozen wilderness was our prison.
Everyone was housed together.”

“
Women, too?” Sissy
asked.

“
Men only,” Ivan said.
“This gulag was men only, mostly Bratva. The prisoners made their
own culture. It was like cavemen times. The biggest and most
vicious were in control. I am not big. I am not able to fight, so I
was in trouble.”

“
Sexual violence?” Sandy
asked.

“
No,” Ivan said. “We had
barely enough food to stay alive and it was very cold. I’d grown up
in the ballet, where there are lots of gay
danceurs
. I was able to steer clear
of that kind of trouble. But the violence and cruelty was
pervasive. The pressure of the cold, lack of food, and endless
violence brought out people’s most basic animal nature. It was like
a zoo, only worse — there was no one to feed us.”

Ivan gave a curt nod.

“
You know Bruno?” Ivan
asked.

“
He’s the bodyguard for
Jill’s grandfather, isn’t he?” Sandy asked.

“
He was,” Ivan said.
“About a week after I got to the gulag, he found me. I was bullied
into dancing like one of those little dolls in the music box. Spin
around and around. Jump high, no higher. He fought for me and
won.”

Ivan’s eyes welled with tears.

“
You don’t know him,” Ivan
said. “He is a good friend, very loyal. He gave me protection and
asked only that, when we were out, I would dance on stage again. He
said he’d never seen anything as beautiful as the ballet. After
some months, his boss, Otis, arrived with some of his men. This
Otis still had access to lots of money. He is also a great healer.
He set up a hierarchy, and Bruno made sure I was a part of
it.”

Ivan smiled.

“
I sponsored Bruno to come
to the US,” Ivan said with a nod. “Otis came with Perses. Without
Otis, Bruno would have been killed in Russia. I paid for him to
come to this country. Bruno stayed with me until Otis was released
by the government.”

Ivan raised an eyebrow.

“
That was the gulag,” Ivan
said. “Horrible. I still have nightmares.”

“
How did you get out?”
Sandy asked.

“
Seth O’Malley,” Ivan
said. “For a long time after the fall of the Soviet Union,
everything was for sale in Russia. You want to own something,
someone, anything, you just need to make an offer. People were sold
from the gulag all the time.”

“
Sold to do what?” Sandy
asked in a horrified voice.

“
Anything you want,” Ivan
said with a shrug. “Whenever a military helicopter flew overhead,
the prisoners rushed to see who was leaving. Bets were placed —
were they leaving for something better or something much worse? It
was thirty below, and still everyone ran out. I could only hobble,
so I stayed behind. When I was first there, I’d hurt my leg with
stress fracture, and it had never healed.”

Caught up in the memory, Ivan’s gaze
softened.

“
There were some military
people,” Ivan said. “They had been to the gulag before to take a
few people from Poland, I think. Diplomats — or maybe spies,
soldiers. This day, the military surrounded O’Malley. They moved
through the prison like old-time movie stars. People threw
themselves at them. Begged to go with them. Many, many people would
rather be slaves than continue to stay in gulag. But the military
could only take what they’d paid for. Otherwise, they would lose
their ability to get any more. They found me in the
cell.”

“
Because of your leg?”
Sissy wheezed.

“
Yes,” Ivan said. “One
man, their leader, I think, put me over his shoulder and walked out
of the gulag. The military people and Seth folded back into the
helicopter, and we flew away.”

Ivan raised his eyebrows and nodded.

“
Like that,” Ivan said.
“One moment, I am starving in filthy, violent gulag, and the next I
am pumped full of morphine and flying on a US
helicopter.”

Ivan snorted and shook his head.

“
Life is amazing,” he
said.

“
I had that experience
when I went to live with my dad,” Sandy said. “Sissy’s father,
Mitch. One moment, I’m wondering if I can survive, and the
next. . .”

“
Everything is different,”
Ivan said. He gave Sissy a fond look. “That’s my story of the
gulag.”

“
What did you do after
that?” Sandy asked.

“
We flew to a military
base, where they did surgery on my leg,” Ivan said. “I stayed there
while the Americans tried to assess if I was a spy. Eventually,
O’Malley arrived to bring me to Denver. Some twelve hours later, I
met Sissy, and my life started, probably for the first
time.”

As if he hadn’t intended to say the last
words, Ivan blushed and looked down. After a second, he looked up
at Sissy and said very simply, “Thank you.”