Chapter 11
Magda walked into the bar and sat down at the same little table where she had sat the day before. The bartender was at his station behind the bar. He spoke into his telephone, put it back into his pocket, and came to her table. “Would you like the same kind of tea today?”
She said, “Yes, please. I’m surprised that you remembered.”
“You’re special.”
“Then I’ll try to come back to see you.”
“No, you won’t,” he said, and laughed.
“No,” she said. “But whenever I want real tea, I’ll remember you, and that’s something.”
He made her tea in exactly the same way as before and brought it to her table. She took a tiny sip to confirm that it tasted the same.
Magda was a suspicious person. If she had been walking alone into a random bar in Boston or anywhere else in the daytime when there were no other people, she would have been certain to order something in a sealed bottle, to be safe from being drugged.
Here things were different. This was a bar controlled by the Pachan of the local Bratva, Pavel Obolonsky, who had just rescued her from a women’s prison.
For the moment that meant she was under his protection, and he had the power here.
She also knew another thing about power.
If Obolonsky wanted her to be drugged she would be.
It took a long time for the two bodyguards to appear.
This time they appeared from the hall leading from the back of the building, separated, and took new positions in opposite corners of the room.
She was not surprised, because they and their boss would be smart enough to vary the things they did.
A few minutes later, there were car doors slamming and other men came in and sat at various tables.
Among them, just one in a group of nine, was Pavel Obolonsky.
If she had not been studying each man as he came in, she might not have noticed him. He came to her table and sat.
“These men are all members of the brotherhood. All of them are good earners and are loyal to me.”
“Of course they are,” she said. “But will they be loyal to me?”
“They’ll be loyal to me. They’ll show it by doing what you say.”
“Have you asked them?”
“Yes. I told them who you were before they came here.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Are there any favorites you recommend?” If he pointed out any favorites, she would know who was his spy.
“They’re all reliable. If they weren’t, I would have been ashamed to bring them. I’ve put too much into this to throw it away. Look at them. Talk to them. Do whatever you need to find the ones you want.”
Magda stood up and walked up to the nearest table. She said in English, “Tell me why you want to be part of this crew.”
The first man was young and had an earnest expression. He said in Russian, “Because I want to do things that are important.”
“I spoke to you in English. I know you speak Russian. How is your American?”
He said, “It’s very good.” It wasn’t, so she excused him.
As Magda moved from man to man and talked to them, there were some who spoke English that sounded to her more like the pronunciation and cadence that she had been listening to since she’d arrived in Los Angeles ten years ago.
She asked a blond one wearing a Red Sox hat to describe the last baseball game he’d seen the Red Sox play, and asked the one after that for directions to the Museum of Fine Arts, and the one after that to tell her what those buildings were on the other side of the bridge over the Charles River.
She rejected one because his authentic American accent was pure Boston, and might be memorable anywhere else.
When she had talked to all eight, she said to Obolonsky, “Any of these men could do the job. But the ones I choose are that one, who looks like a young doctor, the one like a pianist over here, that one who looks like a lawyer, and the teacher beside him.”
Obolonsky laughed. He stood and pointed. “You, Mr. Teacher, you, Doctor, you Mr. Lawyer, and your friend the piano player, come over here. The rest of you, stand by.”
The four she had chosen were all men who didn’t look especially menacing. They were fit and in their prime but weren’t big or heavily muscled. They also didn’t look very much like each other. They could speak English with American idioms and slang with comfort and authority.
Obolonsky sat down beside Magda again. “I’ll make sure the credit card in your purse has plenty of money available, so you can buy a car or two and travel, and we’ll give you some cash too, but remember when you’re deciding what to use, a bill can hold a fingerprint or DNA.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“What else can I do?”
“I need to talk to them some more. I may find I need to change some of them, so will you please have the others stay here for a time—maybe an hour?”
“Yes.”
“And I don’t mean any disrespect to you, but I’ll learn the most if I speak to them alone.”
His eyes showed he was amused at her boldness. She didn’t take her eyes off his or smile, and she was sure he realized she was right. He stood and said loudly, “Vlad and Ivan and I have to leave. Everyone else stay. Magda will tell you when to go.”
Magda got up too and walked over to the space between the two large round tables where her choices were sitting.
She sat down on one of the empty chairs.
“I picked you because you look and sound the most like Americans, and you don’t look like thieves.
” She smiled. “At least on the surface. But none of us is going to wear a bathing suit, eh?”
Two of them lifted their shirts to provide a fleeting glimpse of their tattooed torsos.
“Tell me your names.”
“Maxim.” “Dmitri.” “Mikhail.” “Daniil.”
“Did the Pachan tell you what we’re going to do?”
“He said you would tell us,” Maxim said.
“We’re going to find a woman, capture her alive, and bring her back here. She looks like she’s in her mid-to-late thirties, black hair like mine, blue eyes, tall, and thin. A few years ago, I was one of a group from Los Angeles who came here to capture her. It sounds easy, doesn’t it?”
The four all looked as though they agreed that it did. Daniil said, “I’ve helped do the same thing five times, twice in this country.”
“It sounds the same, but it’s not the same,” Magda said.
“She isn’t like the ones you kidnapped. When we traced her here, your group helped us.
Four vors, all of them former soldiers who liked to spend their spare time hunting and fishing together, followed this woman onto the north end of the Appalachian Trail into the Hundred Mile Wilderness.
She let them follow her far from civilization, nearly catch up with her, and then she began to kill them one at a time.
She left booby traps on trails, poisoned their food, ambushed them, whatever they were vulnerable to.
She came out of the woods after a few days. None of them ever did.”
Maxim said, “Are you sure she did all that alone?”
“Yes,” she said. “I was one of the five who caught up with her later. We ambushed her and overpowered her. She fought, and we had to hurt her to control her, and then we tortured her to teach her that we would. Night came and we needed to sleep. We took her down to the windowless stone cellar of the house, chained her to the pipes so she couldn’t escape, then climbed the wooden stairs.
The men cut off the top of the wooden stairs with a chain saw so she had no way up.
We locked the door, and left her in the dark.
Then we went upstairs to sleep in the bedrooms. During the night she found a way to start a fire, fill the house with smoke, and get it to float up through old heating ducts to kill us with carbon monoxide.
The important thing to know is that she knew the carbon monoxide would kill her too. ”
“How many of the Bratva was that?” Dmitri said.
“The Pachan and three men who were in the upstairs bedrooms all died first. The one besides me who was sleeping on the first floor woke up and ran away without even trying to wake the rest of us, so I had to pay him a visit later to kill him. With the ones in the forest, that makes eight. I always thought she had died too, but she didn’t.
Your boss had people watching for her obituary, or a local news report of her death, or any recognition. But they never found one.”
Dmitri said, “Why are we going after her—revenge?”
She laughed. “Nothing sentimental like that. There’s no money in revenge.
She has helped dozens of people who were being hunted to disappear.
My Pachan was sure that for each of them there were people who would love to pay him millions of dollars to find out where one of those people is now, and what name they’re using. ”
“I don’t understand,” said Daniil. “You want to get the fugitive to pay you not to tell their enemies where they are?”
“No. We make the woman tell us where they are, then we go get them, and sell them to the people who hate them. What I think will work is to hurt her, make her feel the kind of pain that is also sorrow because you know that during those seconds, you’re losing the use of something—a hand, a limb, an eye.
Once we force her to give us one of those fugitives, it will get easier.
She won’t be trying to save her self-respect, because it will be gone.
Each time we ask for another person, it will be harder for her to keep from telling us. ”
Magda could see that these men were paying close attention. She said, “Questions?”
“How do we find her?”
“Right now, I only know where she was when we found her the first time. If she’s gone, there will be paths that lead on from there.”
“When you caught her before, did you get her to tell you about any of her clients?”
“Very smart. No. She didn’t tell us anything. But this time she will. When we catch her this time we can hold on to her as long as we want—maybe years. Other questions?”
None of the men spoke.
“Then get ready to leave in three days. One small suitcase, all clothes good quality. One sport coat and dress pants, nice shoes, nice watch. An informal outfit with jeans, walking shoes, that kind of thing. Before we go, it’s okay to back out.
But once the job starts, there’s no quitting, only desertion.
” She studied them for another moment. “Last questions? No? Then I’ll tell the others they can go. I’ll see you on Monday morning.”