Chasing the Storm (16 page)

They passed baths containing cracked dried mud and a wide round pool half full of thick green slime. Finally, Sokolov led them into a vast room with a single chandelier dangling from the ceiling. On the far wall was a peeling fresco of snowy mountains and pine forests. A few triangles of marble tiling still clung to the concrete underfoot. Someone must have plundered the tiles after the place was abandoned.

There were three chairs and a small table underneath the chandelier. On the table was a small leather pouch.

Sokolov invited Rygg to take a seat and switched on the chandelier by pulling a tasseled chain. Then, while Valentina pressed the gun against Rygg’s back, Sokolov bound his wrists and ankles to the chair with plastic cuffs.

Returning to the table, he opened the pouch, which was like a plumber’s apron, with little sewn compartments for tools. He ran a finger tenderly along the humps of leather. Then he turned to Rygg.

“I’ll relieve you of your briefcase, if I may,” he said.

“Help yourself,” Rygg said, with as much irony as he could muster.

Sokolov took the briefcase and opened it, laying the contents out on the table. Computer, several folders, two pens, some scraps of paper, and a few photographs. Taking a scalpel from the pouch, he stripped away the interior lining, then the outer leather. He found the hidden slot and peered into it, then pried it open with a metal rod. Shrugging, he sliced away the flap of the handle, and chuckled to see the knife within. He showed it to Valentina, who had taken a seat in the chair opposite Rygg and was training the gun on him. “Very nice,” he said.

He lifted out the knife and set it on the table, then swept the stripped briefcase and fragments of wood onto the floor.

Sokolov pulled a chair closer to Rygg and crossed his legs. “This shouldn’t take long,” he said. “You are, after all, not our main interest. You’re a pawn, essentially innocent, I believe. But first, out of curiosity, how on earth did you manage to survive the Assuit mission? I mean, your team got infiltrated at the last minute, and most of your friends were killed within a quarter of an hour in that well-orchestrated ambush. But you walked for days through the desert until, dehydrated and half-dead, you got picked up by some Bedouin. Then, as if
that
wasn’t enough, your yacht caught fire in the middle of the ocean. And yet, here you are. Alive and sound. How the hell did you manage to escape from a situation like that?”

“I’ve got magical powers,” Rygg replied tonelessly.

“Magical powers.” Sokolov started laughing his almost child-like laughter again. “Did you hear that, Valentina? Our friend here has got magical powers! Nevertheless, Mr. Houdini, you have some information we are interested in. And the first question, of course, is: where are your glasses?”

“I don’t wear glasses,” Rygg retorted.

Sokolov looked at him sadly. He groomed the hair on the back of his left hand, as though he was stroking a small cat. “Mr. Rygg,” he said. “This attitude is unhelpful and will result in someone getting injured. This person will not be us. Now, let’s try it again: where are your glasses?”

“All right, all right.” Rygg slumped in his chair. “I – well, I don’t know where they are at this moment.”

Sokolov looked at him. His eyes were really an extraordinary color: a light, vivid green. He exhaled slowly through his nostrils. One hand went to the table beside him and fingered the pouch.

“Okay,” Rygg said. “Okay. You win. Here’s the scoop. Lena told me what to do with the glasses.”

“Which was?”

“Uh, let’s see. At two, uh, no … at three-thirty, I was to go to the café across the street, order a beer, and leave the glasses case on the counter. I was supposed to drink my beer and then walk back to the hotel.”

“Did you do this?”

“Yes.”

“And who picked up the case?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me ask you again. Who picked up the case?”

“And let me tell you again. I don’t fucking know.”

“Who was beside you in the café?”

“Some man I’d never seen before. I didn’t pay him much attention. Lena said not to look at my neighbors. Just order the beer, leave the glasses, drink the beer, pay, and get out.”

Sokolov nodded, ruminating. He took a cell phone from his jacket pocket and talked to someone in Russian for a couple minutes, then returned his concentration to Rygg.

“Did you see anyone walk by the café while you were drinking your beer?”

“Yes.”

“Who was that?”

“Your bitch here.”

“If you will be polite, we will be polite, Mr. Rygg.”

“Could I just point out,
Mr.
Sokolov, that I’m sitting here in your moldy ‘resort’, as you call it, bound hand and foot, at gunpoint? Not really my favorite tourist spot in Moscow so far. Certainly not polite, where I come from anyway.”

“I understand. We’ll make this as painless as possible. So. When you left the café, you returned to the hotel, but you did not immediately go to your room.”

“I didn’t?”

“No, you did not.”

“Oh, you’re right. The beer went straight through me. Had to use the toilet.”

“But why didn’t you use the lavatory in the lobby?”

“Is there one?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I guess I didn’t see it. I just went down the first hallway.”

Sokolov watched him for a while, stroking his fingers. He had thick patches of hair between his knuckles, and he preened the hair toward his nails. Then he nodded. “Well, I have sent someone to investigate. We’ll see what he finds.”

“Your gray-suited goon? The guy in the elevator?”

“Perhaps. Now, we’re going to go back over the past month or so. In a bit of detail, I’m afraid, so bear with us.”

Rygg at first tried to fudge a bit, but soon discovered that Sokolov knew everything. He knew about Orfeoplatz and about the Croatia farmhouse, about Sasha, about Rygg’s second Hamburg trip and meeting with Yuri, about the trip to Paros, the meeting with Petrovich, and the mission in the Ministry of Defense. If he left out a section, Sokolov would steer him back, prompting him to elaborate further. “And what did Mr. Marin serve you at the nightclub?” he would ask. “And where did you keep the cigarette packet?” “And where did you go that afternoon with Miss Devonshire?”

He talked for three hours, and by the end was so exhausted he felt he might say anything at all. But he was aware, as well, what a fabulous story it made. He had just described the mushroom hunt at the dacha when Sokolov’s phone rang. He listened for a few minutes, then said something, listened again, and asked a series of short, sharp questions. Then he put the phone back in his pocket.

“Mr. Rygg,” he said, smiling. “My colleague has turned up no trace of the glasses case.”

“But I told you. I left it on the counter. I don’t know where it is.”

Sokolov nodded. “We will see.” He turned to the table and stroked the pouch. Then he took out a scalpel from its cubbyhole. He held it up between them. “Which hand?” he said.

“What?”

“I am not a truly nasty person, Mr. Rygg. Merely practical. So I need to know which hand you write with.”

“I’m right-handed.”

“Excellent, then we will start with your left hand.”

“
Rasshøl
! What are you going to do, you mother fucker?”

“I am going to remove one joint of the little finger on your left hand. I will remove a joint at a time, until you tell me where the glasses case is. Am I being clear?”

“But I told you—” Great beads of sweat had instantly started running down his face.

“Yes, yes. Now, Mr. Rygg. I am going to ask you a question. And I need an answer.” He spoke slowly, enunciating each word. “Where is the glasses case?”

They had done torture training in the Special Forces – the FSK. Weeks of it, and some of it so close to reality he still had dreams about masked men bearing implements. A couple times a year, he woke up sweating, in a rictus of fear. But now, as Sokolov moved toward him, his only emotion was utter rage. “I just told you exactly what happened to the glasses case, you bastard. I put it on the counter in the bar. I have no idea who picked it up. Do you want me to lie to you? Is that what you want? I could, you know. I could tell you a whole slew of lies. But I told you the truth.”

Sokolov smiled. “We will see. We will see,” he murmured. He crouched beside Rygg’s left hand. The scalpel sparkled in the multiple lights of the chandelier. Rygg suddenly heaved backward, trying to knock the chair over, but it was a heavy armchair with wide, carved legs, and he couldn’t budge it. Sokolov looked at him earnestly. “Please stay as still as possible for the operation, Mr. Rygg. If you move, I may slip.”

So Rygg watched. As though it was happening in a movie, the blade dropped toward his hand. The scalpel went through his knuckle with a little see-saw motion and the tiniest crunch, and he knew Sokolov had performed the procedure before. The severed tip of his finger rolled off the arm of the chair. It bounced once, wobbled in a slow half circle, and ended up in a pool of water. A crimson arc spread on the cloth of the armchair.

Sokolov wiped the blade on the side of the chair and sat back on his heels, looking with satisfaction at his handiwork. Rygg just stared at his lopped finger. He was trapped in a bubble of horror, a state of shock. There was no pain, just the sensation of blood throbbing out. “
Å faen
!” he said. “
Å faen
!” Even his voice sounded as though it belonged to someone else.

Sokolov returned to his seat. “Now, Mr. Rygg. Let’s try the question again, shall we? Where are the glasses?”

Rygg looked up slowly. “I already told you,” he said through gritted teeth. “I put them on the fucking counter.”

Valentina said something to Sokolov. She looked a little pale. Sokolov leaned slightly toward her and explained something, shaping the air with his hands and gesturing to Rygg a couple times. From his tone, Rygg guessed he was elaborating on his methods. Valentina nodded, but her mouth was a bloodless line.

Sokolov folded the leather pouch and placed it on his lap, and Rygg thought with relief that he was done, but he began to strop the scalpel slowly on the leather, watching Rygg’s face all the while. The only sounds in the vast room were the chafing of steel on the leather and the tick of drops falling from the ceiling into the pools of water and the faint birdsong from the smashed windows fifty yards away. For a long time he stroked the blade on the leather. Then he stood and stepped towards Rygg’s hand once more. The arm of the chair was now crimson and soggy.

But this time, as he crouched beside the chair, his cell phone rang. He stood and took the call. Rygg watched his face color and he spoke abruptly into the phone. Then he flung the scalpel on the table and hurried to the door, shouting something over his shoulder to Valentina.

For a long time, Rygg and Valentina just sat there staring at each other. The blood continued to run from his finger. He tried pressing the stump of the finger into the cloth. It wasn’t very sanitary, but he had to stop the bleeding. There was so much blood already soaked into the arm of the chair that he couldn’t tell if his plan was working. After a while, he felt himself grow sleepy. His head was heavy, and he wondered drowsily whether it was from shock or blood loss. “Just going … just going to take a little nap,” he told Valentina and laid his head against the back of the armchair.

When he woke, the light had changed. Valentina was still sitting across from him, but she was slumped lower in her chair. Sokolov still wasn’t back. For another half hour, she watched him, then stood and went to the hallway. She called, but no one answered. She came back and stood beside her chair, the gun still pointed at him. He could read the indecision in her face. Finally, shrugging, she took up the scalpel. Placing the gun against Rygg’s temple, she sliced the plastic cuffs away with four deft movements. He tried to drag himself free of the chair and groaned. When he managed to stand, he swayed and had to clutch the arm of the chair. She stood away from him, waving her pistol. “Walk,” she said.

“Let me just catch my breath here,” he said. “I’m dizzy.”

“Walk!” she ordered, more insistent.

“All right, all right,” he muttered. He took a step, then toppled headlong.

He fell against the table, bashing his forehead open and falling on his side onto the concrete. As he lay there groaning, he heard her step toward him. Holding his eyelids a scant millimeter apart, he saw the blurred reflection of her ankles. “Get up!” she demanded. He did nothing. She took a step closer and prodded him with the tip of her shoe. And suddenly, in a single jolt of power, all his rage and terror concentrated in the effort, he seized the nearest table leg with both hands and hurled the table into her body. He heard the gun go off, but he was already flinging himself toward her. The edge of the table had caught her in the chest, and she was still slightly off balance when he reached her and drove his stiffened fingers into her throat. She sank without a sound, her face half-submerged in the same pool in which his severed fingertip lay. The gun clattered into the pool as well. He picked it up. It was dripping. He tossed it aside, then bent and picked up the scalpel. Blood was pouring down his cheek from the gash, and he wiped it off with his sleeve. His heart was pounding. He walked as quickly as he could toward the windows and climbed through, cutting open his forearm on a shard of glass in the process.

Outside, he dove into some bushes and crouched there. It was late afternoon. The light was pale gold on the leaves. Butterflies danced above the overgrown flowerbeds, and he could hear the trilling of birds in the trees. He was resting the hand holding the scalpel against his knee, and when he shifted position, his forearm stuck to his trouser leg. Grimacing, he ripped it free and looked at the gash. It seemed pretty deep, but he didn’t know what to do about it. The wound in his forehead was also still bleeding, but the stump of his little finger had dried into a chunky, blackened cap. He supposed it would get infected – the armchair couldn’t have been that sanitary.

For five minutes, he crouched in the bushes, but heard nothing at all. He was about to get up when he heard the sound of an engine. A car sped through the trees, gold flashing off the windows, and he heard it crunch to a halt in the gravel of the driveway. Two doors slammed. After a moment, voices echoed within the building. He looked toward the window and was horrified to see a bloody handprint on the sill. There was a trail of blood along the earth, leading directly to his hiding place.