Soul Full of Guns: Dave vs the Monsters (8 page)

They successfully extracted the subject from the safe house, removing her to another address, a flat above a small gymnasium owned by a minor figure in New York’s Russian mafia and frequented exclusively by tattooed émigré gentlemen of the same ilk.

Varatchevsky insisted on taking the antique sword she had stolen from the Warat Gallery. It was very valuable, she said. Nobody should touch it. Ever.

CHAPTER EIGHT

For such a terrible place, the gymnasium was strangely reassuring to Karin. It looked as though it might once have been a boxing gym. Faded photographs of old fighters looked down on a ring where two men were sparring. But they fought with knees and elbows. They grappled and wrestled, contending with each other in the mixed martial arts style which had become popular on cable television. She recognized elements of Muay Thai, TKD and judo in their techniques. The thugs and criminals who looked on, waiting their turn in the ring, were of no mind to her. She had dealt with worse. She was worse. But the smell of the place, the reek of hard gain and sacrifice, recalled for Karin the world of her childhood, and the words of her first coach; wisdom beaten into her over many years in the little gymnasium in Volgograd—literally beaten into her, with a long bamboo cane.

“Ekaterina, if you are any good, you will know you could be so much better.”

The
bratva
, lords of this squalid realm, and their sullen
petukh
serfs and butt boys studiously ignored her when she arrived with her minders. She wore gray sweatpants and an NYU hoodie, and carried
Ushi to yasashi to
wrapped in a towel. The gym men were all huge with steroids, grotesquely tattooed and dead behind the eyes. Her extraction team were anonymous in smart business casual. Not suits and ties, but pressed slacks and sports jackets. They could have been real estate agents on a day off, or owners of a chain of garden stores. Nobody would remember them and she knew them only by first names. Vladimir, their leader. Josef, the second in command. And Nikita, Leonid and Yuri.

“So Mikhail just missed out,” she joked.

They did not smile.

Vladimir and Yuri escorted her through the gymnasium where a dozen men punched heavy bags, or grunted and snarled while lifting weights, or just leaned somewhere, smoking. Probably awaiting instructions to shake down a luckless restaurant owner or travel agent. Karin suppressed the sneer that wanted to crawl across her face. They were scum, but they had their uses. And the
pindosi
would get nothing from them. Not with pliers and blowtorches.

The small bedsit in which she was to stay before extraction was a long way down-market from the safe house where she had first hidden out. It was a bare two rooms, one with a cot and table, the other provincially furnished with a toilet bowl, sink and two kitchen appliances—a toaster and a kettle—on a shelf over the water basin.

A woman waited for her, a doctor to judge by the medical bag she carried. Vladimir and Yuri waited outside the room while the woman examined her.

“Take off your clothes, please.”

She was young, and quite pretty. Anybody else might have speculated on what path had led her to this place, but Karin knew that such paths were many and treacherous and often hidden. She was here, that was all that mattered. A daughter of the Rodina, serving her country. Just like Colonel Varatchevsky.

Like Karin, the doctor spoke with an educated American accent. Refined, east coast. No trace of any foreign tongue contaminated her words but neither did they carry any information such as a regional inflection. She had learned English as a second language and she had learned it perfectly.

“Do you have any injuries?” the doctor asked as Karin peeled off the hoodie and stepped out of her trackpants.

“No,” she answered.

The doctor, who was removing a stethoscope from her medical bag, stopped and looked at her.

“Really? I understood you had been shot, lightly wounded.”

She really looked at Karin now, frowning and casting a glance back at Vladimir, who stood by the door to the little room with his arms crossed and a line creasing his brow.

“We were briefed that the colonel would be injured, but mobile.” He shrugged. “She is mobile.”

“And not at all injured,” the doctor added.

“Doctor, might I speak to you in private?” Karin asked. At this Vladimir’s frown grew darker and more serious.

“This is not standard procedure, Colonel.”

“I have women’s issues I must discuss with the doctor. I am sure if they are relevant to your mission she will brief you.”

As she would, Karin knew. There would be no hiding anything from them, and she did not intend to. But she also thought it more likely she could explain what had happened, up to and including the inexplicable, if she had only to make her explanations to this one woman at first. She was a doctor, a scientist. She would see this through the lens of her particular training. At least initially.

“Fine. Give us a few minutes if you will,” the doctor told Vladimir.

He gave Karin a hard look, and then took his time to pointedly survey the small room, nodding when he had assured himself there was no way she could escape it. The only window was big enough to let a cat through, and that was all.

He pulled the door behind him, but did not close it completely. She knew he would strain to hear what she said. Karin leaned forward, speaking in a low voice, but not conspiratorially.

“What do you know of the circumstances of last night?” she said.

The doctor’s expression changed to one of surprise, and then fright. She actually reared back, shaking her head.

“I know nothing!” she said and then seemed to collect herself, throwing her hands up as though to forestall a reply by Karin.

“Of course I know of the FBI raid…”

(So she did not know it was a Clearance operation.)

“…That you escaped. I know I am to assess your suitability for extraction. Specifically whether any wounds or injuries will restrict your ability to travel or make you more identifiable to the American security services.”

She stared at Karin who now stood before her in underpants and a sports bra.

“But you have no wounds or injuries. You appear to be in remarkable shape. So this ‘woman’s’ issue, it’s…”

“Complicated,” Karin finished for her. “Doctor…?”

She waited for the woman’s reply.

“Oksana will do.”

Another first name, probably invented too, but definitely not American, or Americanized. Like Karen Warat.

Karin took in a deep breath and let it out as she said, “Okay. Oksana. I was wounded last night. Shotgun pellets grazed my shoulder. Here.” She indicated the flawless skin of her right shoulder. “I felt another pellet go into my leg. Here.”

She lifted one foot and pointed at a similarly unmarked area of calf. The muscles flexed and stood out in strikingly geometric contours.

“My skin was burned by some sort of organic acid and I cut my bare feet badly on broken glass.”

She did not bother showing the doctor those injuries. How could she? There was no evidence of them.

“I can tell you what happened, but not how or why. I need you to believe me, and for you to believe me I will have to prove something to you.”

Oksana barked out a short, dry laugh. “Yes, you will!”

Karin held out her left hand, palm down.

“I need you to cut my hand,” she said, and as expected the doctor looked at her as though she was crazy. Even crazier than she had seemed with her talk of invisible injury and missing wounds.

“This is ridiculous,” she protested, getting up as though to open the door and call Vladimir back in.

“Please,” Karin said softly, laying a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder. Oksana could no more push past it than she could pass through a locked steel gate.

She fell back into her chair, confusion running free on her pretty face.

“Please,” Karin repeated. “A light cut will do. You must have a scalpel in your bag?”

At this the doctor’s expression turned suspicious and Karin struggled to maintain her patience.

“Oksana, please. If I wanted a weapon I could have taken one from any of those gorillas downstairs. They are all carrying handguns and knives. For that matter the Tokarev pistol in Vlad’s shoulder holster is unsecured by any safety clip. Probably to allow a faster draw. I could have taken it from him on at least four occasions in the last half hour. I do not want a weapon. I do not need a weapon.”

Karin smiled, warm light coming into her eyes.

“Look,” she said, pointing to the bundle she had laid on the bed. “But don’t touch. Seriously.”

Karin carefully lifted the bath towel by one corner, allowing it to unroll and spill the katana onto the thin blanket.

“I do not need to trick you into giving me a weapon, Doctor. Now, if you would make a small incision on the back of my hand and have a swab ready to clean away the blood?”

She could tell Oksana was unsettled by all this, not reeling with confusion, but not far off.

She will be reeling soon enough, Karin thought. She knew the doctor’s mental state, not just by the rapid coloring and discoloring of her face, or by the jerky movements of her arms and legs as adrenaline flooded her neuromuscular system, but because she herself could feel it. She could almost taste it in a way. Oksana’s distress was a physical reality to Karin. Something she could hold and even mold.

Vladimir’s voice boomed through the door.

“Are you all right in there, doctor? Is everything well?”

“Yes,” Oksana said, sounding distracted. “Just a minute more.”

She rustled about in her medical bag, eventually producing a small foil packet and a cotton swab.

Her hands were shaking.

“Maybe I should do this,” Karin offered and Oksana gave the items up gratefully. Glad to be free of the responsibility for whatever was about to happen.

The foil pack contained a disposable scalpel blade, which Karin unwrapped carefully. Without delaying she used the razor’s sharp cutting edge to open a shallow wound on the back of her hand. Shallow, but serious enough to allow quite a lot of blood to flow. Rivulets of blood coursed down her hand and bright red drops began to fall to the floor. Before she made any more of a mess, Karin crossed to the small sink and turned on the cold water.

“Come and see,” she said. “Quickly. This doesn’t take long.”

The doctor’s chair scraped on the bare wooden boards and she needed only two steps to close the distance and stand beside her unusual patient. Karin turned off the faucet. The pink water drained away and she held out the cut for Oksana to inspect.

The doctor sucked in her breath audibly as the wound closed up and the flesh knitted itself back together.

“I did this to myself many times this morning,” Karin said. “An experiment. It is always the same.”

She knew Oksana was going to faint before the color drained away from the woman’s face. She moved quickly to grab her under the arms, calling out, “Vladimir, quickly.”

The ex-fil commander kicked the door in and came through with his gun drawn and held out, ready to shoot. His eyes widened only slightly at the sight of her half-naked form wrestling the doctor towards the chair. She couldn’t lay her on the bed. Oksana might come into contact with the sword.

“She’s had a nasty surprise,” Karin said, lowering her into the chair.

Vlad did not drop his aim. He swore at her, in Russian.

She was not “colonel” now. She was “bitch”.

Karin sighed.

“Let’s bring her to and she can explain what she’s just seen. Then I will tell you some things you don’t know, and you will have to talk to our superiors. I do not envy you, Vladimir.”

CHAPTER NINE

Vladimir left an hour later with Yuri. The ex-fil commander looked worried, his underling nonplussed. Yuri had not yet been informed of the new correlation of forces. His turn would come. Vlad’s deputy, Josef, a tall, dark-eyed Ukrainian, had been brought into the impromptu briefing and he remained with Leonid and Nikita who were, at that moment, ordering the occupants of the gym downstairs to get the hell out of their little clubhouse.

Karin could hear the objections, mostly framed as guttural profanities, but she noted that objecting was not the same as refusing. The gym was empty within five minutes. She had been able to hear all this not because anybody had raised their voices but because she’d discovered a disturbing ability to tune into nearby conversations as though turning the dial on an old-fashioned radio. She noted the development, but filed it away for future reference. They had other, more pressing issues to investigate first.

“Nobody touches the sword,” she said as Josef and Oksana left the room with her.

The Ukrainian gave the enchanted weapon a worried look. He had accepted its bizarre, possibly supernatural status even more readily than Karin. He had also crossed himself twice in the manner of the Orthodox faith, when she had demonstrated the skin-cutting phenomenon again. The fear that burned off him in waves was almost as great as the religious awe she sensed behind it.

“Do not worry, Colonel,” he said. “I shall lock the room.”

She was back to being “colonel”, not “bitch”.

“I’m not concerned about anybody stealing it,” Karin said flatly.

“I understand that.”

They filed down the narrow staircase, returning to the main floor of the gym. Leonid pulled down the steel rolling door. It moved reluctantly, with a grating rumble implying it was rarely if ever closed. Karin’s eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness quickly. Fluorescent lights flickered on overhead and she winced in discomfort, but then adjusted to that too.

Josef went into a close huddle with his men as Oksana took a digital recorder from her medical bag and a large phone from her purse. A Samsung.

Karin was back in her sweats. She ignored the incredulity in the voices of the two ex-fil team members Josef was trying to brief. Their turn, too, would come. Indeed it was here.

“Jumprope first?” she asked, and Oksana nodded. “Three minutes, as fast as you can.”