“It is,” Roman says. “Better than your own men.”
Bohdan sighs and rubs at his temples. “Sofia, I will arrange for someone to drive you home.”
“I could stay and help him.…”
Bohdan opens the kitchen door. “You are no longer needed, Sofia.”
One of the tracksuit crew, a thin guy with short bleached hair and a tattoo of a diamond on his neck, takes me by the upper arm and hustles me out the door to the back seat of a Volkswagen. He says nothing on the ride, not even asking for the address to Hedvika’s place, which he apparently already knows.
Back in my room, I lie in bed for three hours, unable to sleep, unable to even think of anything beyond Roman’s beating and how it affects my plan. By four in the morning, my eyes are just beginning to close. And that’s when they come for me.
*
There’s a sharp rap on the door, and I hear voices and the rattling of keys. Before I can ask who it is, the door opens, revealing Hedvika in a thick quilted nightgown, hair bundled up in a net. Two men stand behind her, one of them the driver with the diamond tattoo, the second, someone new. He’s thick and pushing fifty, with flushed cheeks and a gray mustache turned orange under the nostrils from cigarette tar. Poor Hedvika looks both terrified and furious.
“You are to come with us,” the second man says as he begins yanking open drawers and throwing everything I have onto the bed. The other guy pulls a folded trash bag from his pocket, snaps it open, and starts stuffing it with my possessions, everything except my cell phone, which he puts in his pocket. I pull on my jeans and a T-shirt, but my boots and shoes are already in the bag and they ignore me when I ask for them.
When they finish, there is nothing left of me in the room, no sign that I was ever there. I see the man with the mustache counting out bills and placing them in the palm of Hedvika’s hand. Paying her for the trouble, and a little something extra to just shake her head if anyone comes around asking about me.
There is no question of my not going with them. “It is ordered by Pan Kladivo,” one of them says. For only a brief second, I consider running, but I’m barefoot and wouldn’t get more than a few meters before one of these two gunned me down.
I’m ushered into the side door of an unmarked van. The back is separated from the front passenger compartment by metal mesh running from floor to ceiling. They take hold of my arms and push me to the van’s floor. Arms twisted behind my back, I feel steel on my wrists and hear them ratchet handcuffs into place. I lash out with my legs, but the guys catch them and cuff my ankles, too. Diamond tattoo kneels on my back while the second one slides a black fabric bag over my head.
The van door slides shut, and we’re moving a few seconds later. The big guy is still here with me in the back. I can smell him—beer, cigarettes, and sweat. I can feel him, his mass looming there in the space. There are no seats back here, and very little to hold on to, so as the van turns a corner, I tumble against the back doors.
“The passport you showed Miroslav Beran at the casino is an obvious fake,” the big guy shouts in Russian. “What’s your real name?”
“Sofia Timurovna Kozlovskaya,” I answer.
For this answer, a slap to the side of the head.
“What’s your real name?” he shouts again.
“Sofia Timurovna Kozlovskaya,” I say again.
A slap to the other side, this one harder.
“What’s your real name?”
“Sofia Timurovna Kozlovskaya.”
A boot lands in my side, and I topple over. The van is accelerating and the road beneath us is smooth, as if we’ve just entered onto a highway. What I’m counting on—what I have to count on—is that the passport Yael gave me is as good as she said it was. And even if it’s not, I have to stick with the story to the end. If they still have my dad, telling them my real name is a sure way to get him killed.
Hands grip my shirt and yank me forward. “We checked the records, you little bitch!” my interrogator shouts. “Your passport says you’re from the city of Armavir, but the hospital has no paperwork on you.”
It’s clear from his accent he’s a Russian native, so I answer in Russian, working to get my own accent absolutely perfect. “Because I was born in Novokubansk. Armavir is where I grew up.”
He slams me up against the wall of the van. “I know Armavir as well as I know my own prick. Tell me, what color is the roof of the opera house?”
“The roof of the opera house is blue.”
“Bullshit! There is no opera house in Armavir!”
“The roof of the opera house is blue,” I repeat.
“You told Pan Kladivo your father was Spetsnaz,” my interrogator screams. “We know he was a factory worker.”
“After the army, he was a factory worker,” I shout back. “He died when I was a girl.”
“Aw. Poor little slut,” he growls, then boxes my ears. “What did he die of?”
“Vodka.”
A punch in the left kidney. “What kind of factory did he work at?”
“Rubber,” I yell. “His factory produced rubber.”
A punch to the right kidney. “Rubber for what?”
“Your mother’s dildos.”
But he’s tiring from the game, and after he shouts a few more questions and throws a few more punches, he stops. He’s breathing hard, wheezing. Then there’s the click of a lighter and the smell of cigarette smoke.
The waiting, the guessing at how it’ll all turn out, is over I suppose. Something’s gone wrong, some hole in my story found, some bit of intelligence gathered. The evening that began in a restaurant by a castle will end with my body in a barrel floating in a swamp. It occurs to me this might be too great a leap of logic, but truly I can see no other conclusion.
We’re still on the highway. Even through the walls of the van I hear the thrumming of truck tires and the snort of air brakes as we pass big eighteen-wheelers. I lose track of the time. The interrogation and beating seemed like hours but was probably no more than a few minutes. My body hurts, and I feel myself bleeding from the wrists where I’ve pulled at the handcuffs in futile rage.
After a very long time marked only by the sound of traffic and the clicking of a lighter as my interrogator starts a new cigarette, the van slows, and we make a hard right. The road here is more pothole than pavement, and I bounce and roll around the back of the van like a toy ball. It’s this way for ten minutes or so. Then we slow again and take another right.
We must be nearing the end now. My stomach turns to iron, and I wonder how they’ll do it. Shoot me? Strangle me? And why here? Why not in Prague? The answers don’t really matter, I guess. They’re just something to keep the fear boiling. My body is numb with resignation. No atheists in foxholes, the saying goes, but there’s clearly no God here, either, so I guess we’re even. It’s all inevitable and clear as day.
Even through the hood over my head, I can tell the driver has opened his window. The air pressure has changed, and I hear a dense symphony of crickets. I smell the delicious, damp air of a forest at night.