XXI
“Moy tvoyou mat!”
Rostov was rasping out a stream of Russian interspersed with English curses. “Bastard! Son of a bitch! Bitch!”
“Sticks and stones, comrade,” Jack taunted with a grim smile. Clara, sitting on the pile of mattresses, could hardly believe that the plan had worked. So far.
Rostov was hanging from the ceiling, his feet not quite touching the floor, the muscles in his arms bulging as they bore his weight. Handcuffs passed over the middle of the steel door tracks overhead were locked onto each wrist. He was naked. Clara stared at his gently twisting body with detached interest. It was pale, lean, well-defined if not as muscular as Jack’s, and sprinkled with reddish hair. Not unattractive as male bodies went, she supposed, then wondered at herself. Five days before she would have been embarrassed at seeing a naked man. But there she sat, prepared to witness the very intimate kind of torture that Jack had devised with grim satisfaction.
Jack was delicately wrapping a piece of thin wire around Rostov’s testes. The wire was connected to the generator.
Jack would ask Rostov questions, and if the answers weren’t satisfactory would crank the generator. Sooner or later the resulting jolts of electricity traveling through Rostov’s genitals would be enough to make him tell them anything they wanted to know, Jack assured her. Clara didn’t ask how he had come by the knowledge. She was only glad that Rostov had not thought to use such a method on her.
They were safe inside the trailer for the moment. The banging at the door and sides had stopped; it was apparent that the goons couldn’t get in. Rostov was completely at their mercy, and as Jack had said, they weren’t likely to get a better chance to find out what Rostov knew. Once they made a break for it anything could happen. The goons, knowing that they were trapped in the trailer, were likely to try to wait them out. For a while, anyway.
Rostov kicked at Jack’s head as he finished wrapping the wire. Jack ducked, catching the blow on the top of his head, then straightened, unhurt.
“You don’t have much in the way of brains, do you, comrade?” he asked. Then, without warning, he slugged Rostov hard in the stomach. The Russian screamed, writhing like a worm on a hook.
“That was for Hammersmith,” Jack said. Rostov heaved and gasped, trying to catch his breath. Jack waited until he almost succeeded, then without warning slugged him hard in the stomach again. Rostov gagged, flopping about like a hooked fish.
“That was for Gloria.”
Rostov’s breath wheezed and rasped in his throat. His face was blue. He sounded and looked like he was dying. Jack smiled. Then he slugged Rostov as hard as he could in the groin.
“And that,” Jack said, “was for Clara.”
Then he turned his back and walked over to the generator while Rostov was violently sick all over the floor. Jack waited patiently for the spasm to pass.
“Now, comrade, you will tell us what you know about plans to assassinate the secretary of state.”
“V’nebrachnee!
Capitalist idiot of a pig! Have you forgotten that four of my men are right outside this trailer at this moment? Undoubtedly they have sent for backups. You can never get away. They will storm this truck at any minute. You will be killed, or better yet, not killed. I will make you pay with a thousand screams for this.”
“That reminds me,” Jack said, and picked up the walkie-talkie that Rostov had been carrying when he entered. “You will tell your goons that they are to do nothing—nothing—without orders from you. Do you understand? Tell them we are negotiating. Clara, hold this thing up to his mouth. Keep the button depressed so they can hear him. When I tell you.”
“If you think I will …” Rostov said with contempt, his pale blue eyes icy with rage as Clara scrambled up to do Jack’s bidding. She had to stretch to bring the transmitter level with Rostov’s mouth, suspended as he was, and took care to stay clear of his feet. She was surprised at the eagerness she felt to make him pay for what he had done to her.
“Oh, I think you will,” Jack said. He picked up the pistol that Rostov had been wearing in a shoulder holster under his clothes and pointed it at Rostov’s knee. “If you don’t, I’ll blow your kneecap off.”
Rostov spewed another stream of mixed Russian and English invectives, which stopped abruptly when Jack cocked the pistol. Glaring malevolently at Jack, he began to speak rapidly into the transmitter.
“In English, so we don’t have any mix-ups,” Jack directed smoothly. “Clara, now press the button.”
Clara pressed the button so that Rostov could transmit. Furiously, Rostov did as he was told. When Clara lowered the transmitter, his ice cold eyes met hers.
“I will very much enjoy making you pay for this, Miss Winston,” Rostov promised softly. Clara felt a frisson of fear shoot down her spine, but tried not to let it show. After all, she and Jack had the upper hand—for now, at least.
“Last chance, Rostov.” Jack moved back beside the generator. Clara sat on the moving pads. Both watched the sweating, naked man suspended from the ceiling, but with very different expressions.
“Go to hell!”
Jack turned the crank. Current zinged along the circuit of wires. Rostov screamed. Clara flinched, wincing. She knew that Rostov deserved everything Jack did to him and more, but she still hated to hear the sounds of a human being in pain. Even Rostov. Who was not, in her opinion, qualified for the designation of human.
The procedure went on for some time, but at last Rostov broke. First he started to sob, then as Jack turned the crank again he screamed and began to babble. The secretary of state would be hit on Seabrook Island as soon as he arrived for the secret summit on the evening of the sixteenth. The assassin would be a sleeper—an agent planted years before to give him time to worm himself into a position of trust—just recently activated. As to Bigfoot, Rostov’s knowledge was sketchy. He knew that the mole was very high in U.S. intelligence circles and that he himself had orders to protect him at all costs.
The only new information he professed to know was that Bigfoot was the head of a vast network of sleepers planted
in the country years earlier. He was activating them, one by one, on orders from Moscow, Some years before, the first had loosed the virus that caused what was subsequently named Legionnaire’s Disease at a convention in Philadelphia to test the efficacy of the virus as a biological weapon; the second had poisoned Tylenol capsules in Chicago to weigh the vulnerability of the United States to attack through their consumer market; the assassination of the secretary of state was to be carried out by the third. Rostov didn’t know how many more there were. He only knew that the sleepers were to be activated by Bigfoot as the need arose.
“Why, you monsters!” Clara sputtered, dumbfounded and horrified at the revelations.
Jack silenced her with a wave of his hand, then turned his attention back to Rostov. His hand rested threateningly on the crank.
“Who is Bigfoot?”
“I do not know his identity. I swear to you, I do not!”
Jack turned the crank. Rostov screamed.
“All I know is that one of the
Nachalstvo
once referred to him in my hearing as the black hawk with the yellow eyes!” Rostov stumbled over the words in his haste to get them out. Sweat rolled down his brow; his eyes were fearful as they watched Jack’s hand.
“The black hawk with the yellow eyes,” McClain said slowly, his eyes narrowing. Then he shook his head, reaching for the crank again. “It tells me nothing.”
“It is all I know! I swear to you! I know no more!”
Jack’s hand hovered. Then he looked at Clara and shook his head. “I think he’s telling the truth. In any case, we’re out of time. We have to get out of here before dawn. Darkness gives us our best chance to make it. We have about an hour left.”
“You will … never make it, Dragon.” Rostov’s voice was weak, but he had recovered some of his defiance.
“If I don’t you can make sure you won’t.” Jack was stripping. In response to Clara’s questioning look, he indicated the clothes they had removed from Rostov.
“If they can’t tell which one of us is which, we’ll gain a little time. A minute or two while they figure it out.”
Clara watched him pull on the navy slacks and button-down shirt, its collar spotted with blood from the fight. The pants were a little long, the shirt a little tight. He left the shirt half unbuttoned to allow his shoulders moving room. Then he strapped on Rostov’s shoulder holster. The white sweater, also daubed with crimson splotches, went on last. Jack kept his own sneakers. When he was dressed, Clara was impressed. In nice clothes, even with red-rimmed eyes, a black stubble of beard, and miscellaneous bruises, he was a strikingly attractive man.
“Try anything funny, comrade, and I’ll blow you straight back to the Kremlin.” Jack’s voice was as wintry as Rostov’s eyes. Picking up his jeans from the floor, he slid them efficiently up Rostov’s legs, fastening them around the other’s middle. Then he tied an arm of his sweatshirt around each of Rostov’s ankles to form a primitive hobble. Finally he took the wire which he had stripped from Rostov’s genitals and refashioned it into a loop which he passed around Rostov’s neck. The other end he wrapped around the rifle, which he then pressed tight against Rostov’s neck.
“Now unlock the handcuffs from one of his hands, Clara.’
“You will pay for this, Dragon,” Rostov promised through clenched teeth. He was drenched with sweat and pale from his ordeal. A pool of vomit had formed beneath his feet, and more had spattered his ches’. He stunk of vomit and
body odor. Clara crinkled her nose as she obeyed Jack’s order.
Rostov dropped to the ground, his knees sagged, and he fell forward so that his forehead rested against the floor. With a sound of disgust, Jack shoved the muzzle of the rifle hard into his neck.
“I always knew you were a pansy, Rostov. Get your hands behind your back.”
Rostov did. At a sign from Jack, Clara snapped the open handcuff shut so that Rostov’s hands were chained behind his back.
“We’re going now, and you’re coming with us. You’re our hostage to fortune, comrade. If anyone tries to stop us, takes a shot at us, whatever, you’ll be the first one to die. At this range a Kalashnikov AK-47 would blow your head clean off, as I’m sure I don’t need to remind you.”
He let Rostov feel the muzzle of the rifle for emphasis. Rostov said nothing, but Clara could feel the hatred emanating from him in waves.
“Now get on your feet, asshole. Clara, bring the walkie-talkie over here. Rostov is going to tell his comrades that the negotiations were successfully concluded. We are coming out, and they are not to try to stop us. Tell them that you will be leaving with us. And to make sure the keys are in the cab. In English.”
Rostov rose slowly and awkwardly to his feet. He swayed, then with sheer force of will seemed to make himself stand upright. The wire around his neck dug into his flesh, causing the skin to redden and bulge out on either side. Grim-faced, hands in firing position on the rifle that dug into the back of the Russian’s neck, Jack stood less than a foot behind Rostov. The tableau looked eerily like a picture Clara had seen in the
Washington Post
not long before with a story on a hostage taking. It seemed such a dreadful, barbaric act when someone else did it. But now Rostov was their hostage, all that stood between them and a barrage of bullets. It was a terrifying thought.
Clara brought the walkie-talkie and held it to Rostov’s mouth. His eyes were feral as he glared at her. But he said what Jack told him to say.
“Ask them if they understand.”
Rostov repeated the question.
“
Da
, Comrade Colonel.” The voice crackling back over the walkie-talkie could have belonged to Orlov or Malik or any of the others. It was impossible to tell. If the goons had disobeyed Rostov’s previous instructions—which she thought they would have done if they were smart—a whole army of KGB thugs could be waiting for them outside. Jack might open the door to a hail of gunfire.
“Tell them to get behind the trailer where I can see them from the door. Tell them to lay down their weapons. If they don’t, if I see anything that looks halfway lethal in their hands, I will kill you.”
“You will then be killed within instants yourself. Dragon.” Rostov’s voice was recovering its strength. Jack jammed the muzzle hard against his neck. Rostov grunted in pain.
“You won’t live long enough to enjoy it, I promise. Now tell them.”
Rostov told them. Jack reached up and unfastened the set of handcuffs that had been locking the door. Then he turned to Clara.
“Turn off the light. We don’t want to make it too easy for them. Then get over here between us. In the middle. You’ll be harder to hit.”
Clara did as she was told, half turning the crank on the generator so that the trailer suddenly became as pitch black
as the darkest cave. She made her way to Jack’s side on blind instinct, then wedged herself between his sweatered chest and Rostov’s naked, sweaty back. Her skin crawled at the idea of being so close to the man who had hurt her, but she did it anyway.
“And take this. If anything goes wrong, use it. It’s an automatic, all you have to do is pull the trigger and hold it down. It will keep firing.”
“Jack …” She felt the gun pressed into her hand. It was cold and heavy. She was suddenly, terribly, afraid.
“Don’t worry, baby. I’ve been in tighter spots than this and lived to tell about it.” He whispered the words into her ear, his breath warm on her skin. Then she felt the brush of his mouth as it widened in what she sensed was, incredibly, a smile. “Besides, think how good this will sound in one of your books.” Her fear didn’t lessen, but her heart warmed. Please, God, she prayed feverishly, please don’t let anything happen to either one of us, Jack or me.
Jack straightened. Clara caught her breath, knowing that it was time to go.
“Tell Orlov to open the door. Then tell him to step back where I can see him.”
Rostov obeyed. Clara tensed. Behind her she could feel Jack’s body take on an added alertness, like a prowling tiger in the dark.