While he waited for the line to connect, he read the note.
“What’s up?” Cooper whispered.
“You should come back here. We have a bit of a situation.”
“Did you hear from Alex?”
“Yeah, but…well, you’ll see when you get here.”
As he waited for Cooper, Deuce contemplated staying out on the road with his catch. Traffic was usually rare along the country lane, but rare didn’t mean never, and there was always the chance of someone coming along before Cooper did.
That would turn an already complicated situation into a complete mess. So, without much effort, he located the injured man’s car and used it to transfer them both back to the barn.
When Cooper walked in a few minutes later, his first words were, “Whose car is that?” Then he saw the man tied to the campstool next to the tent. “And who the hell is that?”
“You kind of answered your first question yourself,” Deuce said. “Answer to the second’s a bit tougher. I mean, unless you read Ukrainian.” He tossed the guy’s wallet to Cooper. “He’s not talking.”
“Okay, but what’s he doing here?”
“Interesting story, that,” Deuce said. He filled Cooper in on his trip to check the drop box. “He obviously knew about Traz. So there’s a chance he knows Alex isn’t who she says she is. No way I could let him go.” Deuce waited, but when Cooper offered no response, he said, “Please tell me you agree with me.”
“I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?”
“No, I mean, I know,” Cooper said. “It’s just…Jesus. What a mess.”
“It could have been a whole lot messier if I hadn’t stopped him.”
Cooper nodded absently. “Was he alone?”
With a disdainful snort, Deuce said, “Do you see two of them?”
“Maybe the other guy got away.”
Deuce shook his head. “No, he was by himself. If there was someone else, they would have taken the car when my buddy here and I were having our little conversation.”
“Let me see the note.”
Deuce handed the piece of paper to him. There were only three words on it:
Message received. Complications.
Cooper frowned as he read it, then handed it back. “Wonderful.”
“Did you really expect everything to go smoothly? You put her in a prison. In Ukraine.”
Cooper looked back at their captive. “Is he the only one who knows about Traz, or is he working for someone?”
Deuce knew the question was rhetorical, but he answered anyway. “If you can get him to tell you, be my guest. But I don’t think he speaks English.”
“Then I guess we need a translator.” Cooper pulled out his phone, dialed, and said, “Cooper for Olek Morrison.” A long pause, then, “Hey, Olek, it’s Coop. I need your expertise.” Another pause. “Yeah, but FYI, he’s injured and probably not exactly happy. I’m putting you on speaker.” Cooper switched the device to speakerphone, and knelt down next to their visitor. “Olek, can you hear me?”
“Loud and clear,” the voice on the phone said.
“Good. He’s right here. Maybe we should go for a name first.”
Olek’s next words were incomprehensible to Deuce, but the man on the ground didn’t have any trouble understanding them. He looked surprised for a moment, then said, “Leonchuk. Vanko.”
“First name, Vanko,” Olek said. “Last name, Leonchuk.”
“He’s wearing some kind of uniform. Ask him what it’s for.”
Olek did, and Vanko responded.
“He works at a prison.”
“Slavne Prison?”
The man perked up at the word “Slavne.” Olek asked the question, and the man nodded, repeating several times a word that Deuce guessed meant yes.
“Ask him what he’s doing out here.”
After an exchange that lasted nearly half a minute, Olek said, “Well, that was fun. Let’s see. He says he’s going to call the police if you don’t get him medical attention right away. He also says you’re in big trouble. It was a little more colorful than that, but that’s the gist.”
“Tell him to answer the damn question.”
Olek repeated the question, but before Vanko could plead his case again, Cooper tapped his damaged knee with the toe of his boot. The guard yelped in pain.
“Tell him if he doesn’t want matching knees, he’ll cooperate.”
Olek told him. The response was nowhere near as long as Deuce thought it would be.
“He says he needs medical attention now,” Olek explained. “He claims he’ll tell you what you want to know, but you’ve got to get him to a doctor first.”
“Oh, he’s definitely gonna need a doctor. Surgery, too, is my guess. But they won’t be able to do anything until the swelling goes down. A week or two at best. So I think we have a little bit of time.”
The story, as Vanko finally told it, was an interesting one, involving Alex — whom he called “the prisoner Powell”—a prison doctor, and a nurse who was apparently the one Deuce had seen drop off the note. According to Vanko, the doctor and the nurse seemed to be working together. If true, that was news neither Cooper nor Deuce had known.
Vanko’s reasons for following the nurse were a little sketchy, so he was either leaving something out or lying entirely.
When asked who else knew about his trip out here, Vanko hesitated before blurting out that his friend Danya knew all about it.
There was no either-or this time. It was clearly a lie.
When Cooper and Deuce had gotten all they could out of Vanko for the moment, they let Olek hang up, then moved to the other end of the barn to have a private conversation, just in case Vanko understood more English than he was letting on.
“What do you think?” Cooper said. “Is he working alone or not?”
Deuce glanced at their prisoner. “Alone would be my guess. Did you see the way he looked when he was telling us about the nurse and the doctor? I got the sense he had it out for them. But that’s just a guess. I could be wrong. I could be very wrong.”
Cooper frowned as he nodded. “That’s the same sense I got, but there’s one way to know for sure. If he’s working with someone, sooner or later they’ll come looking for him.”
“Yeah, but before they do that, they might shut down Traz and go after Alex. Is there any way to get a warning to them?”
Cooper shook his head. “Only the dead drop.”
“Right, but McElroy must have communicated with Traz somehow before this.”
“Burner phone.” Cooper pulled his cell back up and started going through the contacts list.
“You have the number?” Deuce asked.
“Yeah, but don’t get too excited. They were instructed to only hold on to it until Alex arrived at the prison, in case something went wrong before then.”
Cooper found what he was looking for and punched in the number. But only a few seconds passed before he hung up. “Disconnected.”
“So we’re stuck with the dead drop.”
“That’s what it looks like.”
Deuce sighed heavily and shook his head in disbelief. “I’m gonna say this again. Maybe it’s time to call this thing off. I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a real uneasy feeling, and the sooner we can get Alex out of there, the better.”
Cooper was silent for several seconds. “McElroy won’t approve it.”
“Fuck McElroy. You’re on-site mission chief, right? Don’t you get final call?”
More silence. Then, after taking a deep breath, Cooper gave Deuce a nod. “I’ll write the note.”
Chapter Twenty
When Alex woke the next morning, she could hardly believe that only two days had passed. She felt as if she’d been in this shithole of a prison for half her adult life.