It was just 1200 and Professor Ri would appear a few minutes from now. Nate would play a subordinate role during the debriefing, asking CIA intel requirements at appropriate times. Ioana would take a walk during the meeting, standard procedure, but also convenient in that Dominika wouldn’t have to explain who Nate was, at least not right away. Dominika had been toying with the idea of recruiting Ioana for CIA—she would adore Bratok, she knew—and the notion of a subagent, a confederate, helping her in this work was something she wanted to discuss with Benford. She was sure it would work, especially if Ioana graduated from Sparrow status to operations.
When she opened the cottage door she knew the world had caved in. The little living room was a mass of splintered furniture and fallen bookcases, including an overturned, blood-soaked armchair that had been slashed a dozen times, its stuffing scattered over the floor. The galley kitchen was ankle deep in broken plates and glasses. Nate silently motioned to the door, indicating that they should get the hell out, but Dominika shook her head and whispered “Ioana.” Stepping over detritus in the living room, they checked each of the tiny bedrooms. In one, Ioana’s clothes were strewn across the bed and a bedside lamp had been thrown in a corner and smashed. Dominika’s face was white.
They found Professor Ri facedown in the tub in the bathroom, remnants of the five liters of his blood slick along the tub walls, most of it already down the drain and likely feeding the Danube carp. They went back out into the living room, Dominika’s face a grim mask.
“This was Shlykov. He just terminated my North Korean case.”
Nate kept looking around, listening for footsteps. “Shlykov did this?” he said.
“No,” said Dominika. “This is the work of his Spetsnaz bulldog. A man named Blokhin, who killed Repina in New York.”
“Where’s your girl?” said Nate. “Wasn’t she here waiting for your agent?”
“I don’t know,” said Dominika. “I’m worried.” She snapped her fingers. “The recorder.” She went to the sideboard cabinet—it had not been touched—and took out the wire recorder Ioana had installed in anticipation of the debriefing. She plugged it into a wall socket, rewound it, and punched “play.” Nothing but the hiss of dead air. “It’s voice activated,” said Dominika. “She would have put it in standby mode before Ri arrived.” The hissing stopped and Dominika froze, staring at the spools. The two concealed wireless mics had picked up muffled conversation.
Blokhin’s voice suddenly came through clearly, speaking English (so the bastard spoke English all this time, concealing it, thought Dominika). His voice was quiet and silky, then Ioana’s voice, angry and indignant, then Blokhin switched to Russian, harsh and brutal, followed by the cacophony of a struggle. Ioana was strong and lithe and it went on for some time, the sound of her ragged breath first faint, then loud as she moved away from or toward the microphones. There was the constant sound of breaking furniture. Dominika looked imploringly at Nate, then back at the recorder, as Ioana cried an abrupt “nyet!” followed by a groan, then silence, then moaning, and Blokhin’s silky voice again, in English, asking when the Asian gentleman was expected, and would Egorova be coming with him, and Ioana’s voice spitting an obscenity. The sound of a slap, then a heartrending scream, quickly muffled, and Ioana woodenly droning that the meeting was postponed, Egorova wasn’t even in the city, and another scream, What was he doing to her, was she tied in a chair? and then a faint knocking at the front door and Blokhin’s voice moving away, then disappearing altogether until a man’s high-pitched wail was faintly heard while Blokhin did in the bathtub whatever he had decided for the North Korean. While he was out of the room, Ioana, breathing heavily, spoke to the concealed microphone in an urgent trembling whisper. Her voice was tinny and hung in the air.
“He is a Russian, sixty years old, sixty-eight centimeters, ninety kilos, fleshy face with scar tissue across his forehead, thick arms, very strong. I cut his cheek with a glass but it did not cost him a step.” Ioana started crying briefly, then stopped and sniffed. “I think he broke my wrist. He has tied my wrists and ankles and he is using the edge of a broken dish between my legs.” Dominika, eyes streaming, looked at Nate in horror. Ioana knew she was going to die, yet she was leaving a message for Dominika. “He is asking for you, when you will arrive. I have told him you are not coming, but he does not believe me. He intends to kill you too. I’m praying you are not on your way. When it starts again I will scream my head off, maybe you will hear, perhaps he will flee. My broken wrist is bent sideways. Wait. I hear screaming from the bathroom. Your scientist is gone. I’m next, he is coming back. Kill him if you can. Ya tebya lyublyu, I love you, take care scumpo, sweetie.” Dominika put her head in her hands and sobbed.
Blokhin’s voice came back in range of the mike, again cooing to Ioana about when Dominika was expected, perhaps not before Ioana had softened the professor up with this pretty little thing between her legs, and another nightmare scream that subsided into a sob, and Ioana slurring over and over that Egorova was not coming, then she began screaming, bellows from the pit of her stomach, over and over, and her screaming was suddenly cut short, followed by awful gurgling and gasping—Nate recognized the sound of someone drowning in her own blood from a slashed throat—then a grunt from Blokhin as if he had slung her over his shoulder, then the sound of squeaky screen-door hinges. Several minutes of silence then Blokhin was back inside, followed by three solid minutes of the sounds of him smashing everything in the cottage not already broken, then the front door slamming and nothing else but the hiss of the recorder.
Dominika pointed to the overturned armchair, the seat cushion sodden with blood. Ioana had died there. Nate walked to the screen door facing the yard and the river, and pushed it lightly with a finger. It squeaked like on the tape. Blokhin had carried her outside. She was in the river, floating downstream to Budapest, if she hadn’t already fetched up in the crook of a floating log. Nate stopped Dominika, red eyed and teeth bared, from going outside. “Stop,” said Nate. “He could be out there. Let me check.” The yard was empty, but there were drops of blood on the pontoon dock where Blokhin had walked out to reach deeper water and dumped her in. Nate walked to the end of the dock, holding his breath, half expecting to see her staring up at him from the blue-black water under the pontoon floats. Nothing underwater and nothing farther out in the current.
The Alte Donau tributary flowed steadily to join the main branch of the Danube several hundred meters south, and there was more than an even chance her body would be seen bumping through the pilasters of the A22 overpass or another downstream bridge, unless he had wired something heavy around her feet, in which case she would come up in the spring, bleached and swollen, an unidentifiable Jane Doe to confound Austrian authorities until she ended up in the communal section of Zentralfriedhof Cemetery, another Sparrow who finished up away from her home, unclaimed by the country she served, her fate and grave unknown to her family.