Authors: EJ McBride
The man leaned back in his chair, staring at Clara, her eyes fixed on his. She read him, his head full of angry thoughts, bottled up with a level of calm she found almost impressive. He genuinely believed she was responsible for the thefts from his casino, and she knew she wasn't going to convince him otherwise without a fight.
'My name is Andrei Gorshkov', he said. 'I came to America when I was a young child, to New York City. The American dream is what my father told me we would be living. But you Americans, you didn't want Russians to succeed. Polish, Lithuanians, all immigrants, all destined to work in laundry stores, to pump fucking gas to you rich American pigs.'
He took another drag of his cigarette.
'So I made the American dream that my father was too scared to chase. I did it for my friends, for my family. Created jobs, put food on the table of my friends, clothes on their children's backs. Not everything I have ever done is legal, but the most powerful Americans in the world didn't become powerful by living uh, how you say, clean life.'
Gorshkov leant forward a little, lowering his voice.
'I have a big family. Brothers who would take a bullet for me. Brothers who would slay an entire family of people in the street in broad daylight, with no idea of why, only because I tell them to do it.'
He leant back again in his chair.
'You're probably wondering why I am telling you this. I am telling you this, so that you truly understand why it's important for you to tell me what I need to know. Why you must tell me who you work for, give me the names I want. You, and your fucking friends, you take 3.2 million dollars from my casino this year. 3.2 million dollars! You think I was just going to sit back and let you steal food from our babies, clothes from our children?'
Gorshkov rose to his feet slowly, pacing the room for a moment, walking over to the bedside table, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and using it to pick up one of the syringes, placing it gently on Clara's chest, the needle not touching her skin.
'Most of the time, when we send women to Russia or Eastern Europe, to work in our whore houses, they are already dead inside. Pathetic, worthless bodies, their souls gone many years before. Like babies hungry for a feed, they just want their drugs, and they will do anything so long as you keep feeding their addiction. And you know, I look at the healthy, happy women in this country, living their lives with their husbands, with their families, spending their money in my casinos, in my restaurants, and I wonder to myself, 'how many needles would it take to transform them? How many needles before they're willing to go anywhere, to do things to men they don't know, just to feed their addiction?' What do you think?'
Gorshkov leant forward again, staring into Clara's eyes, his threats 100% genuine.
'How many needles would it take, to make you give yourself over and over again, day in, and day out?'
Gorshkov stood up and moved toward the door.
'I wonder how many it would take.' He turned the handle, opening the door. 'You have thirty minutes to decide what you would like to do. If you give me the information I want, you go free tonight. If you continue to lie to me, we will find out how many needles it takes for you to sell your soul.'
He left, closing the door on his way out, Clara remaining still on the rank bed, a tear rolling slowly down her face.
Chapter 19
'A beer please', Robin asked of the waiter, a surly looking man with a shaved head and the almost mandatory scribble of tattoos across his torso, arms and hands. The man stared at him in what Robin assumed was disbelief, a disbelief that he empathised with entirely, as he was at this moment in time sharing that exact same disbelief. What on earth was he doing in this bar, a scrawny white caucasian, dressed in a tuxedo, in a 'back-end of nowhere' Russian bar. The barman, either trying to avoid the trouble he knew he could so easily create, or just impressed with Robin's bravado, turned slowly, walked to the run of waist-high refrigerators behind the bar and pulled out a bottle of beer. Not dropping eye contact with Robin, he bit the cap off the top, spat it in Robin's direction, and placed the bottle gently in front of him.
'10 dollars', said the man in a thick Russian accent.
'10 dollars for a beer?!', asked Robin, not having to read the man's mind to realise he was being exploited.
'Sorry, my mistake', said the bartender. '20 dollars.'
Robin sighed, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled two 10s, throwing them down on the table before picking up the beer and walking to a small table in the corner, away from the majority of the bar's patrons. He figured his best course of action was to try and remove some of the attention he'd gathered, before scoping the place out a little and seeing if he could find a way into the back-rooms, or the upstairs or wherever Clara was being held. He looked around, taking the place in as best he could. The bar was fairly large, but not particularly well stocked, with hygiene and customer service being pretty low on the list of priorities. To Robin's left, near the door he came in through were a few more tables, all empty, and a jukebox that looked as though it hadn't played a song for the last couple of decades. To his right, alongside the longest section of the bar were more tables, a mish-mash of 'old' and 'really old', some indoor furniture and some that were clearly designed to be outside but had been brought in anyway, probably stolen from outside of a neighbouring bar in the dead of night. At one of the tables sat 3 Russian men, all wearing dark coloured sports tracksuits and a lot of gold jewellery, their skin riddled with tattoos and scars, dead eyes staring at Robin.
'They think I'm crazy'
, he thought to himself as he read them individually.
'Better than thinking I'm a cop I guess'
. Robin took a sip from his beer, trying to avoid eye contact with the barman or any of the customers, all of whom seemed fascinated with the strange, tuxedo wearing man who'd called in a for a quiet drink, and he soon realised that the quiet approach wasn't going to work. He needed to be a bit more direct, and placing his drink gently on the table, he stood up and walked toward the back of the bar, past the 3 men at the table, and toward a door with a Russian sign that he hoped, prayed, was Russian for 'Restroom'.
Robin found himself in a small, dark room with 4 more doors, including the one he'd just walked through. 2 of the doors weren't locked, and as he pushed the doors gently open, he found them to contain a toilet and a sink each, both room vying for the position of most disgusting toilet in the bar, both standing a good chance of winning. Covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve, trying not to breathe in the stench, Robin noticed a filthy, decent sized window directly above the toilet, and jimmied it open, the yellow light from the outside world now able to shine in through the gap. He pushed his head through, took a deep breath of the fresh night air and headed back into the corridor. Robin looked at the third door, a large metal door with a lock and space for a key, which he assumed would probably lead into the back area of the bar. He stared at the door for a moment, wondering what or who might be on the other side, whether he would be able to physically challenge whomever he might run into, and started to wonder whether there was another option, a better way of getting in. Perhaps he could pretend to leave the bar and climb in through an upstairs window on the outside, perhaps he should have tried that in the first place. Maybe he should climb through the window in the restroom, that way he'd not need to be seen back in the bar at all. As his mind began to race, he heard loud voices from back in the bar, along with footsteps moving in his general direction. Deciding that a chance encounter with one of the Russians here would be far worse than one out in the bar, he decided to chance his luck with the third door, and as he began to think about how he could quickly pick the lock, the door gave as he twisted the handle, not locked at all, and Robin quickly ducked inside. He swung the door shut behind him, twisting the lock handle, shutting himself in but stopping anyone who didn't have a key from being able to get through as well. The handle turned, and Robin realised that one of the Russians was on the other side, no doubt looking for him. He heard both of the restroom doors open, then the sound of a window being slammed shut, and a man walking back through into the bar, shouting at the top of his lungs.
'Fucking pussy jump out of the window!', followed by a rapturous laugh as the small crowd back in the bar joked about the ridiculousness of the situation that they now assumed was over. Robin sighed with relief, and turned to look at where he was. The room was dark, he was unable to make out much at all, and fumbled for a moment until he found a light switch.
Robin realised he was in the garage, a large metal shutter door at one end, and several boxes of alcohol stacked all the way to the ceiling. There were also huge boxes containing cartons of cigarettes, and several clothes racks with fur coats of various styles. In the middle of the room sat a Rolls Royce Phantom limousine, a stunning looking custom vehicle, stretched to give even more room in the back, with tinted windows and custom wheels. Directly in front of him were three small steps leading down into the garage itself, and directly in front of those steps, about 6ft further along, was a full flight of stairs, a single wooden door at the top. Robin quietly began to ascend the stairs, moving in a crouched position, treading carefully, trying to keep one eye in front of him, the other eye on the driver's seat of the car to his right, until he was far enough up to see that the front of the car at least was empty. Assuming that whoever was wealthy enough to own a car like that wouldn't be skulking around in the back seat, he braved his way to the top of the stairs, quietly twisting the door handle and moving through.
Robin was in a corridor, an open door at the far end, and several doors along each side. The walls and floors were bare and dirty, and lightbulbs hung from the ceiling, no lampshades. Robin knew he was probably close, and the loud voices from the room at the far end forced him to move slowly and quietly, keeping as low to the ground as he could, even though he knew that his tuxedo would provide little camouflage should someone decide to come looking for him. He shimmied along the corridor, stopping at the first door on his right, propping his head up against it, trying as hard as he could to listen through, trying to decipher if anyone was inside. He couldn't hear anything, certainly not over the noise coming from the room at the far end of the corridor, and used his left index finger to plug his left ear, trying to focus. As he did so, a door about 5ft in front of him on the right swung open. Robin jolted, felt his heart jump up into his mouth, fighting every urge in his body to not fall over or scream or run, as a large Russian man entered the corridor, turned right and walked to the room at the end, completely oblivious that Robin was there. Robin gasped quietly for air, knowing how close he'd just come to being shot or stabbed or beaten to death, or possibly worse, when he spotted the shadow of someone in far room moving toward the corridor. Robin knew that someone entering the corridor would see him in an instant, and knowing he had no other options, twisted the door handle to his right and fell in, closing the door quietly behind him.
Chapter 20
Clara lay on the bed, cold, tired and alone. She found it ironic that throughout a life where she found comfort in solitude, a life where she was desperate to avoid human contact, now all she wanted to do was be with someone. She'd found a weird sense of belonging, an almost 'family' element to the Agency, and Boal had betrayed her, hung her out to dry for reasons that she still couldn't completely understand.
'It had to be personal'
, she thought, unable to pin any kind of political agenda on the situation. Perhaps Boal had decided she wasn't right for the Agency after all and decided that a killing by Russian gangsters would be easier, 'cleaner' for him.
As she lay in her bed, she thought about her childhood. Camping out in the forest, or fishing with her father; Clara had become somewhat of a tom-boy after her brother died, and voluntarily tried to fill the void in her father's life after Nick's death. As she got older and her abilities made it harder to live with her grieving parents, the arguments became worse, the house becoming an unbearable boiling pot of emotions every day, but as she lay spread eagled, awaiting her cruel fate, Clara knew she would give almost anything to go back to those days. She'd walk for miles, travel for weeks if she had to, just to be able to see her parents again and tell them she was sorry, sorry for being so awkward, sorry that her daughter was always so angry, for a reason that they didn't know, and wouldn't understand or believe even if they did. She thought about some of the people she'd hurt in her life, the strangers, the random people in the street with money, or cars, or something that she needed or wanted. She'd always convinced herself that it was all about survival, that she'd been dealt a bad hand and that these people were luckier than her, they'd be able to earn it all back anyway. But she'd never truly stopped and thought about the psychological damage, the pain and hurt she'd caused. She cried, not for the first time recently, and wished that Robin was there to hold her and comfort her, also not for the first time recently.
As quickly as the thought of him entered her mind, Robin bowled through the door, ungracefully dropping with a thud, closing the door quietly behind him, gazing around the room with an expression that suggested his entrance wasn't entirely deliberate. They made eye contact, Clara ignoring their unwritten rule about each other's privacy, reading his thoughts and hearing his message loud and clear; 'please stay quiet'. She complied, flashed him a pained smile, and sobbed quietly.