Coercion (9 page)

“What made you so sure he wasn’t bluffing?”

“Lots of things.  The confidence in his voice for starters.  The wound was real.  The concept seemed plausible.  He seemed perfectly willing to demonstrate on MiMi if I wanted to call his bluff.  Even if he was bluffing about the poison, I figured he could just come back and kidnap Kimberly another time to get what he wanted.  The only thing I could do to guarantee Kimberly’s safety, was to do what he asked.  Of course, as time went by, I realized I was only renting her safety.  I once asked him when it would all be over and he said the poison would lose its potency in ten years.  At first it seemed like an unbearably long time.  But once I thought about it,  I realized that Kimberly will only be fourteen then, just starting her life.  It gave me hope.”

“Why didn’t you have MiMi and Kimberly checked out by a doctor?”

“He warned me against that.  Said they were booby-trapped, that medical tampering would kill them.  He specifically stressed that x-rays would activate the poison and kill them immediately, right there on the table.”

“Huh.  According to my research your mother passed away four months ago.”

“Yes.  But that was natural causes.  She was seventy-three and diabetic.”

“You don’t think—”

“No.  He called me the day after.  Said he was not the cause.  Told me I had to have her cremated.”

“Did you?”

“Yes.  It was what she wanted anyway.”

Damn.  This guy was covering all his bases
.  “Are you the only person at UE in his power?”

“I’m not sure, but I think not.  He once said ‘Others are taking care of that.’”

“Any idea who those others are?”

“No.  For a while I tried to guess, looking at people’s eyes and using my intuition.  I didn’t get anywhere and found the process maddening, so I put it out of my mind.”

The next question was going to be tough, on both of them, but Alex had to ask it.  “Do you think Frank was working for them too?”

“Heavens no.  He was the one they were working against.  Frank kept finding ingenious ways to counteract all the sabotage they had me do; it was driving them crazy.”

A wave of pride swept over Alex, and he felt himself starting to tear up, so he pressed on.  “Them?”

“I say them because
he always said ‘we.’  But I only ever had contact with one guy.”

“Do you have any idea who he is?”

“No.  But I think I know who he works for.”

Alex’s heart missed a beat.  He raised his eyebrows rather than asking the question as he clenched the edge of the picnic table.

“About two months ago I got an extra page attached to a fax from him, by mistake I’m sure.  It mentioned Irkutsk Motorworks.”

“As in Irkutsk, Russia?”

“Yes.  I only know that because they’re in the industry.”  Elaine squinted.  “How do you know that?”

“My mother was Russian. 
Ya mnogo znayu pro Rosseyou
.  Do they make engines for Military aircraft?”

“No.  I’m pretty sure they just do passenger and cargo models.”

“Did you keep the fax?”

“No.  It made me nervous having it around.  I was afraid he would find it, so after a couple of nervous days I burned it.”

“Damn.  Was the Irkutsk Motorworks fax in English?”

“Yes, it was.  Unfortunately, it was just the last page of the fax, so there were
only two lines.”

Alex held his breath.

“I’ll never forget them.” She smiled for the first time.  “‘This last series of mishaps should ensure that Irkutsk Motorworks beats United Electronics to market by at least twelve months.  I’m working to widen the gap even further.’  It was signed with what I assume was an acronym, a word spelled B-U-K-T-O-P.”

Vasily
tossed and turned in his big oak bed.  It was going to be one of those nights, again.  Despite having closed his eyes for most of the act, he could not get the picture of Luda out of his mind even after a week.  Why did he have to be so bad, to achieve something so good?  He answered his own question. 
Because that’s the kind of world you live in.  That’s what you are trying to change
.

He rolled out of bed into his worn sheepskin slippers and thick cotton robe and went to the kitchen.  Maybe some warm milk would do the trick.  As he watched his favorite Sputnik mug go round and round in the microwave, it
finally dawned on Vasily why Luda had gotten under his skin so.  She had reminded him of another innocent, in another age and a different time.  She reminded him of the girl who started it all…

Julia was a shy girl, so shy that she would shower in the middle of the night to have the bathroom all to herself.  They never did figure out why.  She was beautiful.

It was
Vasily’s second week at Pioneer Camp, the Soviet version of Scouts designed to help children spend their summers growing into happy communists.  The camps were no more successful than any other program designed to force children into a mold, but the communists made a persistent effort.  Along with the mandatory propaganda, however, Pioneer camps were like any other children’s camp: there was always a mischief-maker.  In this case, the relevant rebel was Vasily’s friend Yarik.

Yarik had discovered Julia’s bathing habit one night while sneaking around in search of valuables—cookies, coins, or comics, it didn’t really matter what form the loot took.  He liked the sport.

Yarik went back to the shower for the next couple of nights, hiding in a stall and peeking out while Julia washed herself.  By the third day, his ego got the better of his libido, and Yarik let Vasily and Igor in on his private peep show. 

There was a fourth boy who shared their cabin, Anton, but Yarik did
not tell him.  Anton was an outcast loner with a big shot father, and the three didn’t tell him anything.

Vasily
, Yarik, and Igor were Anton’s opposites.  All three were popular because of their looks, size, and tough-kid attitude.  All three were also orphans—the bottom rung of the social ladder—and well aware their current popularity would not last.  Deep inside they knew that summer camp would likely be the only time in their lives that they would be on par with the likes of Anton, and they were determined to make the most of it.

Although they grew up in the same town,
Vasily had first met his two best friends just a year earlier when the three arrived at a Novosibirsk orphanage.  All three teenagers lost their parents in the same catastrophic explosion at the Angarsk Armaments Factory.  Nearly everyone in their small town worked at the factory, and when it was destroyed, so was Angarsk.  Having survived their freshman year as orphans together, the three were thick as thieves by the time they arrived at Pioneer Camp Eagle the following summer. 

The three went to watch Julia shower that night, and the next.  But after a couple of
days, watching was getting dull and Vasily suggested an alternate plan.  That night they placed a sign on the bathroom door that read “Repairs: use facilities in building eight,” and then they waited in the dark along the trail that led there.

When Julia came along, Yarik popped out behind her, slapped a hand around her mouth, lifted her off her feet, and carried her into the woods. 
Vasily followed while Igor ran back to flush the sign.  As shy as she was about the shower, the three were confident that they could bully her into keeping quiet afterwards.

They
had agreed to take turns: first Yarik, because he had discovered her, then Vasily, for it had been his plan, and finally Igor, since someone had to be last.  She did not put up much of a fight when they untied her bathrobe and pulled up her nightdress.  But when Yarik lay down on her, Julia bit fiercely into his hand and began to scream like a lunatic.

Yarik,
unflappable as ever, punched her in the stomach to knock the wind out of her and stop the screaming.  Then he stuffed her nightdress violently into her mouth to prevent a repeat performance.  Finally Yarik covered her face with her pink bathrobe and had Igor stand on it with a foot to either side of her head, pinning her to the ground.  She quieted right down.

It was Igor’s complaining about
her unresponsiveness that prompted Vasily to take her pulse.

“Get off Igor.”

“What, I’m not done yet!”

“Just get off!”

As Igor reluctantly complied with a chuff, Vasily put his head to Julia’s chest.  He heard no heartbeat.  Julia was dead.  “She suffocated.”

The three boys sat there in stunned silence while the implications of what they had done registered on their minds, and a panic like no other seized their hearts.  Some minutes later
Vasily broke the deathly silence.  “It wasn’t us.”

“What do you mean it wasn’t us?”  Yarik said.  “Of course it was
us.”

“I mean
, that’s our only way out.  We can’t bring her back to life.  We can’t expect to hide her body such that no one will find her.  However, we can make it look like it wasn’t us.”

“How do we do that?”  Igor said with a desperate crack in his voice.

“We make it look like it was somebody else.”

Igor and Yarik waited while
Vasily went back to their cabin and returned with Anton Lebed’s boots and clothes.  Still stunned by what was happening, they then watched while Vasily stripped off his own clothes and gave them to Igor.  “Clean these up, and then clean your own,” he said while donning Anton’s clothing.  Then he bent down and hoisted Julia up in his arms.  “Yarik, you cover up this site.  Get rid of all the tracks and spread pine needles, leaves and stuff so nobody will notice that anyone was here.  Then wait for me.”

Vasily
carried Julia a hundred meters to a shallow stream and continued right through it, slowly, making sure he got lots of muck on Anton’s boots and the bottom of his pants.  Then he walked up the opposite side and laid Julia down in a grassy clearing, careful to leave lots of tracks.  He took Anton’s underwear and ran the fly over her pubis, smudging it with fluid and picking up a couple hairs.  Finally he pulled a button off Anton’s shirt and put it in her hand.

With the stage set,
Vasily returned to the scene of the crime to find his friends whispering like gossipy grandmothers.  “Now listen.  We go back to the cabin.  I’ll sneak in first to put Anton’s clothes back as he left them.  Then you tiptoe in and we all go to bed.  In the morning, we get up early and take very thorough showers.  Then we go about the day as though nothing happened.  Eventually, they will find Julia’s body and begin questioning people, one by one.  We all saw Anton come in about three a.m., because he was noisy.  Igor, you and only you saw him leave at around two, because he jiggled the bunk bed.  You saw that Yarik and I were in our beds then.  If asked, we all saw each other in our beds at three when Anton returned.  That’s all we know.  Clear?”

“Clear,” they answered.  Their voices were resolute, but to this day
Vasily could still picture the fear in their eyes, and feel the reverberation in his soul.

“There’s one more thing,” he said.  “We have to pretend that we’re not friends.  If people don’t know about us, they won’t suspect collusion.  Understood?”

“For how long?”  Igor asked.

“As long as it takes for this to be over.”

The next day events unfolded as expected, and by evening Anton Lebed had been taken away by the police, never to be heard from again.  The Pioneers at camp Eagle were never told what happened to Anton, but Vasily got the scoop from the son of a police officer.  The day following Anton’s arrest, Comrade Lebed had gone to visit his son in jail and they got into a terrible argument.  That night, Anton hanged himself in his cell.

Although the police closed the case with a sigh of relief, Comrade Lebed somehow guessed the truth.  But with Anton dead, there was nothing he could do.  Despite his prominent standing in the Party, the police dismissed Comrade Lebed’s accusations as those of a grieving father with a guilty conscience.  Nonetheless, the three orphans had to continue to pretend to be nothing more than casual acquaintances for months.  Although
Vasily put on a tough veneer for his friends, he spent those months in a fear so deep that Comrade Lebed still haunted his dreams.

Nightmares aside, the episode with Julia and Anton turned out to be an extremely valuable experience.  It gave the three orphans of Angarsk a bond of trust and codependence that would last a lifetime, and it taught them the advantages of maintaining a secret alliance. 
We have to pretend that we’re not friends.  If people don’t know about us, they won’t suspect collusion
.  The Knyaz was born.

The early years of the Knyaz partnership sailed past without a ripple, although
Vasily continued to suffer from the irrational fear that Julia’s murder would catch up with him.  He knew the Fates had a way of maintaining balance, and he worried that Atropos would cut his string as short as Julia’s, or Anton’s.  But once Comrade Lebed finally stopped harassing them, Vasily realized that the net effect of the ill-fated affair was to immunize him from feelings of guilt.  It was, after all, a dog-eat-dog world.

To this day, the Knyaz worked to keep their relationship a secret from everyone else and the wind was still behind them.  When together in public, they portrayed themselves as no more than casual acquaintances.  When in private, they worked on the schemes that would move them where they wanted to go.  They learned to promote each other in subtle but effective ways, and to sabotage each other’s competition masterfully.  For over thirty years now it had been working smoothly, all thanks to a virgin named Julia.

With that thought, Vasily finished his milk and set Sputnik on the counter.  He would be able to sleep now.  Luda was in good company, her death had served a noble cause, and he could feel no remorse about that.