“Why can’t we drive together?”
“I don’t want to get him into any trouble, should we run into any on our way to the Zone. Once we’re out of the Big Land—we’re in it together.”
“Sensible.”
“Look. There’s an abandoned railway yard close by but already on the Zone’s rim. Trains no longer stop there but the rails run through the Zone for a few kilometers. The entry point is heavily guarded, but with a little bit of luck we should be able to get through.”
“We’ll need more than a little luck.”
“Exactly. We’ll also need to be on time and catch freight train 314. It goes daily between Kiev and Chernokhov, passing through the entry point at Prybirsk at nine in the morning.”
The Top hiccups. “By train to where no trains go? That doesn’t give me anything.”
“We’ll hijack one. Once inside the Zone, we jump off and follow the old railroad north-west until here.” Tarasov points at a position on the map. “We’ll go through the Tuzla tunnel, cross a river and arrive at the western edge of the Swamps. That’s where the real Zone begins.”
“And once there?”
“We’ll find my friend. He can be very elusive but I know of someone who keeps track of him.”
“Fine with me,” Hartman says and hiccups once more.
“First phase—let’s all go to sleep.”
“No way for me to sleep with the Top,” Pete scowls. “He’s snoring like a bear.”
Hartman grins. “Don’t even think of sleeping alone and sneaking away, you little rascal!”
“Sorry, little brother,” Nooria says. “You can’t stay with us either.”
Pete sighs. To stretch his legs, Tarasov walks over to Nooria and caresses her freshly washed hair. As he lifts a strand of her long hair, he smells a spicy and sweetish scent coming from her neck. It seems to go directly into his blood, invigorating his body, making all his exhaustion vanish and filling him with burning desire all over.
“What’s this?” he asks sniffing.
“I mixed my own perfume,” Nooria says with a mischievous giggle. “You like it?”
“If I like your perfume?” Tarasov asks taking a deep breath with trembling nostrils. He points to the door. “You two! Get out of here! Now!”
Sharing a grin, Hartman and Pete hurry out. They have barely closed the door when Tarasov lifts Nooria from her chair, tears off the bath robe from her naked body and tosses her onto the king size bed. Nooria is still giggling when Tarasov jumps after her with his clothes barely removed. After a heartbeat, her giggle turns into a moan. She moans louder and louder while letting the desire she stirred up in her man’s body take her with the vigor of a storm, screaming with desire as she becomes one with the waves of its force.
30
“Emission approaching,” Captain Maksimenko says looking at his watch. The elderly woman wearing plain civilian clothes and standing at the far corner of the plain office in the SBU headquarters looks at him with surprise.
“What do you mean, Captain?”
“Making people wait is a perfect way to weaken their resolve,” Maksimenko cheerfully replies. “We’re into something big tonight, Alyona Ivanovna. Just wait a little longer.”
Although the blonde woman waiting outside is used to wait for anyone with just a little more power than ordinary citizens, be it at the local municipality, the train booking booth or a bank clerk’s desk, having to spend two hours on a vacated corridor of the SBU’s grim building has taken a toll on her.
Realizing that her son is to be questioned by the SBU instead of the police was a surprise bad enough. First, she had hoped that ten minutes after her son, who is now nervously shuffling his feet on the wooden bench beside her, had told what he saw they would be soon on their way home with a handsome check in her wallet. As time passed and nobody came to see them, she was hoping that they will get away without too many formalities. After one hour, she wants to leave, thinking that if her son’s information is not urgent for the SBU then they could come back any other time.
The guards abruptly refused them to leave. By now, mentally exhausted and nervously, she feels as if she has volunteered for imprisonment. The thought that the SBU can prove anyone guilty of anything makes her anxious.
“Anhela Kirillovna?”
The sight of the one-eyed officer who at last opens an office door and calls out her name doesn’t reduce her anxiety. When she arrived with her son, she expected that the SBU would be grateful and friendly for providing them with information about a wanted criminal. But now she feels as if she were the criminal herself, waiting for interrogation.
The officer repeats his call.
“Anhela Kirillovna, come in. And this young man is…?”
“Vladimir Alekseyevich Hrabko,” the boy respectfully replies.
“We call him Vova,” his mother adds.
“I am Captain Dmitriy Maksimenko, Security Service. Please be seated.”
Without any apology for making them wait, Captain Maksimenko shows Anhela Kirillovna and Vova to sit down in two chairs standing in front of his desk. Expecting only Captain Maksimenko, she frowns when she sees an elderly female agent with short, grey hair being present as well. To Anhela Kirillovna, she has SBU written all over her wrinkled face as she leans against the wall next to a large photograph of a heroic monument. It shows the profile of a Soviet soldier from the Great Patriotic War, chiseled into a huge grey boulder. The inscription below says, ‘Defenders of Sebastopol — we will never forget you’.
“So, Vova… out of curiosity, you checked up the home page of the police. Then your mother saw there’s a reward for providing law enforcement agencies with any hint about the whereabouts of those wanted criminals. Is that correct?”
“It is, Captain Maksimenko.”
“Anhela Kirillovna, you have the right to stay here while we question your son but please don’t answer any questions for him. Clear?”
The woman nervously nods.
Vova looks around, apparently disappointed at the total lack of anything that would resemble the world of secret services as he had seen in the movies. The Captain’s laptop is the only high-tech appliance in the room, and even that is standing next to a desk lamp that might have already stood on the same desk back in times when the building still housed the KGB.
“So, it is you who saw the criminal?” Maksimenko asks the boy.
Vova looks at his mother for encouragement before replying. Feeling his gaze, Anhela Kirillovna stirs. She had spent the last few moments looking at a plastic bucket with a mop inside, standing in the far corner behind the desk, and had contemplated if the cleaning utensils are still used to mop up blood from the floor like she saw in movies featuring KGB interrogations. She quickly nods.
“Yes, officer.”
“Call me Captain Maksimenko, Vova. Did you ever want to do something for our Motherland?”
“Yes, Captain Maksimenko.”
“Molodets. Do you know that the man you have recognized is a dangerous criminal?”
Vova nods with a shadow of fear in his eyes.
“Don’t worry, Vova, you are safe with us. We need your help, though.”
Before he can continue, the door opens and Agent Fedorka rushes in. Maksimenko glances at his watch. Save for the neatly applied bandages on her wrists, the agent is tidy and her white blouse under the dark grey uniform jacket is perfectly ironed. No one could guess that just fifty-five minutes ago she had still been handcuffed to a bed, bathing in her own and Maksimenko’s sweat who now gives her the stern look of a superior officer.
“We have been waiting for you, Agent.”