“It’s done,” said a worker.
“Fill in the dirt and tamp it down carefully,” said Dennis, removing a yellow golf ball from his pants pocket. He casually tossed the ball into the air and caught it one-handed. “Then erase any trace that we were ever here.”
Kit Bennings sat on a hard wooden chair in a drab Russian government office. On the other side of a battered table, Yulana Petkova sat erect and businesslike. She wore a light blue blouse under a simple gray pantsuit. The clothes looked good but weren’t expensive. Her off-brand purse and black heels matched well, and the costume jewelry was of the latest trend. Yulana, like many Russian women, went to a lot of trouble to look good. Of course, in Yulana’s case, she could be wearing a dirty bedsheet and sandals or be barefoot with tattered overalls and it wouldn’t have mattered, since she was drop-dead gorgeous.
She could easily be draped with real jewels or the finest furs and designer fashions, but that would require her to sell out or sell herself or marry some rich jerk she didn’t love, so she wore what she could afford to pay for from her modest government salary.
Her long, thick, jet-black hair with just the slightest wavy quality framed her face as it fell almost to her waist. Pale white blemish-free skin looked stark next to her hair, and natural aqua eyes tented by thin, finely arched eyebrows were the kind of eye color one might find on Polynesian girls. Yulana’s long, fairly thin nose and full soft-pink lips completed an exotic look that had turned many a head, even in Moscow, a city rich with beautiful, well-appointed women.
And like with many Russian women, her demeanor was tempered by a tough undercurrent. It was like an electrified third rail running along the tracks that was best left untouched. Was it the stereotype of the morose, depressed Russian showing itself? Or was her face betraying the suggestion that she didn’t want to be here any more than Bennings did? Or was her dark expression simply the result of her life experience? Of heartbreak, betrayal, and hard work and a longing for escape to something, anything better than whatever it was that held her in its clutches. Maybe for Yulana, it was a little bit of all of the above; she looked as though she could literally feel her inner hard edge, as naturally as she could feel a pebble in her shoe.
At least he looks sober, thought Yulana, when she first glanced at Kit Bennings. That was the first and so far only time she’d looked at him, when they were first introduced a few minutes earlier. She didn’t bother to stand, offer her hand, or smile. She gave him a quick glance of acknowledgment and then returned to the distractions of her smartphone. For her, the good news was that he wasn’t old, ugly, or fat. Still, she hoped she wouldn’t have to spend too much time with him; if he were a drunk who tried to get fresh with her, especially since they were about to be married and he might have some false ideas about what kind of intimacy that granted him, well, she’d been there plenty of times before and knew how to reduce a man to a ball of screaming pain in the fetal position.
A government clerk with a file folder, and two of Popov’s thugs entered the room. The clerk wordlessly handed Kit’s and Yulana’s passports back to them, then gave each of them an official document from the folder.
“Congratulations. You are now married,” said the clerk in Russian. To Yulana, the clerk’s tone sounded like he had just pronounced a death sentence. And maybe he had.
From the corner of her eye she observed as the stocky thug, who was holding a manila envelope, handed a large wad of U.S. hundred-dollar bills to the nonplussed clerk. The clerk took the money without counting it and left the room.
Yulana watched the stocky thug put the manila envelope on the table and slide it over to Kit, as the other thug recorded the payoff with a video camcorder.
“Open and count,” commanded the stocky thug.
Bennings gave him a hard look but then did as he was told. “Fifty thousand,” said Kit. Yulana didn’t know it, but Popov had cut the original bribe offering by three-quarters.
“The boss told me to tell you you’re not even worth this much.”
“Tell Popov he can shove it up his fat Russian ass.” Kit tossed the envelope of large bills at the stocky thug, who caught it in front of his face. “We all know this isn’t about money.”
Yulana flashed a slight look of surprise. The American doesn’t want the money? She felt intrigued and struggled to hide her interest.
“If you don’t take the money, we don’t have a deal.” The way the thug said this indicated there was no negotiation on the point. He threw the envelope onto the floor at Bennings’s feet.
Yulana stoically watched as Bennings hesitated, then reached down for the envelope. He stuffed it inside his jacket.
The man with the camcorder turned it off, then tossed a cell phone at Bennings, which he caught in the air.
“We’ll contact you in Los Angeles,” said the taller thug.
After the two men left, Bennings stood, pocketed the cell phone, and turned to her. “We need to get going,” he said in perfect, Moscow-accented Russian.
She stood up without looking at him and moved toward the door. The threshold had been crossed; she wondered if in a week from now, she’d still be alive.
The stop at the embassy to get Yulana Petkova’s visa was quick and perfunctory. Secretary of State Margarite Padilla had come through; they were in and out in twenty minutes, and Yulana hadn’t spoken a word.
The car Kit had hired for the morning spent two harrowing hours in chaotic traffic for the ride from the embassy to Sheremetyevo Airport. Ninety minutes after checking in, the Aeroflot nonstop on an Airbus A330-200 to Los Angeles was wheels up. So far, Yulana Petkova had spoken exactly zero words to Kit Bennings.
Yulana ordered a vodka and peach juice from the vacuous, dye-job-blond flight attendant in the quasi-military style Aeroflot uniform. Service on Aeroflot generally ran from fair to poor, just as customer service all over Russia lagged far behind Asia and the West. The idea of taking good care of paying customers was still a foreign concept to the Russians. Kit had had nothing but bad experiences flying Aeroflot, but the airline flew nonstop from Moscow to Los Angeles, so here he was.
He ordered the same drink as Yulana and knocked it back quickly. Unable to sleep or relax, he’d been absentmindedly fingering a key that he wore as a pendant on a silver chain around his neck. His father had worn the key for most of his life and had passed it on to Kit about a year before he died. The key opened a strongbox in the attic of the Chino Hills family home, where important papers and irreplaceable mementos were kept. The steel box held nothing of tremendous monetary value, so the key was more symbolic, a passing of family responsibility from one generation to the next.
There had been nothing sexist in his father’s gesture: Tommy Bennings bluntly told Kit he got the key because he was the oldest and for no other reason. Staci was as sharp as they came, and Kit had considered passing the key to her, especially after all of the close brushes with death he’d had in the last few years. But he’d kept the key and taken his responsibility to the remnants of his family very seriously.
But now only Staci was left, and he couldn’t pass the key to her if he wanted to. Assuming she was still alive.
Bennings scratched his head, his mind stale from internally reviewing scenarios he might have to use in the quest to free Staci. He and Buzz Van Wyke had already worked out some diversionary tactics to employ at LAX in case there was a Russian welcoming committee waiting for them, so at least that much was taken care of. And although he was worried sick about his sister, his thoughts turned to his seatmate and new wife. Feeling frustrated in general, he decided he’d had enough of her pretense.