Into the Lion's Den (29 page)

Sitting on the large couch was a brown haired woman, mid-forties, dressed with a soft grey business
tailor suit, with very expensive jewels. Three men more were in the room, one tall blond called Stephanov, with the
coldest gaze I've ever seen, and the other two were perfect strangers and looked like bullies. Who was this woman,
freely sitting in Constantin's stances?

“So you're the little French whore my husband has been fucking for the past months. You don't look like
much.”

“Your husband?” I stuttered, opening my eyes very big.

“Constantin Ivanovich Repin. Did he forget to tell you about me?”

“Constantin is not married!”

“Married with me since 1984 and the proud father of four children; Sofia, Constantin, Vladimir and
Ivan. They live in St. Petersburg.”

“I didn't know he was married with children!”

“You didn't? It's well known that blonds are idiots but you're giving a new meaning to the phrase. A
single billionaire? Nothing in his life? A rich man just jumping into your bed, telling words of love?” She mocked me
and then directed her attention toward the blond man. “Darling, can you believe it?”

“The little prick believes that your husband is a respectable man,” he smirked.

“Constantin?” She laughed. “How many has he killed in his war with Lintorff this year?”

“I know of twenty-seven killing contracts, my love.”

I was speechless, trying to understand what they were telling, but my brain refused to cooperate. I could
only look at her, his wife and mother of his children, realising that everything she was telling was true.

“My husband is a very successful businessman; he deals with weapons, drugs from Afghanistan, girls
and boys from Central Europe and Russia, smuggling and fraud. His companies are only a front for much more
lucrative activities, not that oil and transport are bad sectors,” she told me with a humourless smile and I was feeling
more and more lost.

“You must be wondering what I could want from a pathetic little thing like you.”

“I'll leave this house instantly and will never contact him again. I swear madam that I didn't know about
you. I would have never been in the middle of a family. Please forgive me if I hurt you.”

“Leaving him was an option a few months ago, but now it's impossible. Constantin is too infatuated with
you to let you go. He would follow you like a puppy all over the world, killing everyone in his path to have you back,
like that friend of yours, the one with the drugs problem. Constantin checks all your letters and conversations and
hated him. He organized the whole set up and had him killed in prison. I know he killed the two girls who were flirting
with you in Paris; Sergei was part of the team. Then came that Art dealer from Amsterdam and that student from your
art class, so many that I'm afraid to forget someone.”

“Don't forget that banker from France,” Stephanov added solicitously.

“You're right my love.”

“You don't love Constantin at all!” I said shocked, not truly understanding what she was telling me.

Those were horrible and stupid accidents! Peter had the misfortune of being in the middle of a mugging gone wrong
He was never my lover. He only asked me to go in a date and I refused. He understood that I was in love with
someone else.

“Of course I don't love him, but he's considering to divorce me and I can't accept that. I would only get
two hundred million from the 7.6 billion he declares. He does not want to share even if I gave him the best years of my
life. I need a more permanent solution in your case.”

I was terrified of her now. She had said it such a cold way, as if I were a bug ready to be crushed.

“The cellar is soundproofed. We already tried it with your man, Yuri.” Stephanov told me as I looked at
him in horror. “You see, a bullet in your head won't do at all. We have to set an example, just in case Constantin finds
a replacement for you. He has to pay for all the pain he put Olga over the past year.”

I wriggled against my captor and fortunately caught Sergei unaware and could knock him down, exactly
as Yuri had taught me, going for his weapon, a Glock 9. Before the other two would jump on me, I surrounded his
neck with my arm, pressing as strong as I could because I knew I only had a chance, and put the weapon against his
forehead.

“One step more and he's dead,” I threatened. Idiot.

The man on my right fired and killed Sergei with a clean shot in the head, making the base explode,
splashing his brains all over me. I was petrified. They had just sacrificed one of their own just like that. The dry sound
of the body hitting the wooden floor and my heartbeat hammering my ears, are things that I won't forget. I took an
involuntary step backwards but I couldn't pry my eyes from the dead form lying in a pool of blood.

“Well, more for us, don't you think?” Stephanov chortled.

I tried to run but one of the monsters jumped on me and knocked me down, hitting my head several times
against the floor to stop my rebellious attempts.

“Stop!” She shouted and for a second I thought that she was having second thoughts and would let me
go. “You're going to ruin the parquetry with the blood. I plan to have tea with my friends here. Take him to the cellar
with his friend while you clean this.”

The brute dragged me, throwing me the stairs down and I think that was when I sprained my ankle, I
don't know. All the previous hits on my head were making me feel dizzy and stunned. My body hit with full force
against the metal door and I realised that the thickness was not to protect the wines environment but to keep the cries
muffled. That door was exactly as one of those recording studios. I tried to stand up but I got a vicious kick on my ribs
and I felt my lunch coming to my mouth and I dry heaved.

“Don't you dare to throw up on me, piece of shit. I'm going to fuck your brains out before we kill you
and hear me well, if you ruin my shoes, your death will be very slow and painful.”

He opened the door and again took me by the collar as if I would weight nothing and threw me against a
limp form on the floor. I recognised it as Yuri, horribly beaten and almost dead because he was almost not breathing.

There was blood everywhere. I turned him around and I saw that they had burned his face with a cigarette. I don't
know but I started to weep like a little girl for him.

“Guntram, your mobile, do you have it?” He croaked to my surprise and yes I had the second one, the
mini or cockroach as I used to call it because of its size. I nodded. “Just switch it on. It has a distress signal.” He
didn't close his eyes, they just went glossy and I knew he wasn't here any longer. I did what he told me but hid the
thing inside his pocket because I thought that they were going to throw our bodies at the same place. They are only
three of them now and two bodies to get out in the middle of Kensington. They would have to wait for the night or
leave us here.

I don't know why I had the flashback of Chano, my lawyer and legal tutor telling me that a torture
session is your most political moment in your whole life. There you understand the concept of power because you
have to convince your interrogator that you have nothing that could interest him. He should know, he barely escaped
with his life in 1977, as he was in the Peronist Guerilla. He was tortured for several weeks till a friend of his father, a
colonel let him go because he was a middle rank cadre, never involved in military actions. He also told me that it's
nothing personal, they want to make it personal so you plead and fall into the abyss when they do nothing for you.

Don't talk to them; try to ignore them; there's a point when the pain nullifies itself and either they kill you or they stop
and let you live to start again later.

Easy to say, not so easy to achieve. I don't know for how long they left me with Yuri, I suppose so I would
be more terrified but his body was a source of comfort for me because I knew that he was in peace now and I
remembered all the laughter we had together when he was taking me to buy a muffin at a stall in Victoria Station or
when he was helping me to smuggle a Star Wars comic from Forbidden Planet—I think he also read them—or when
he was sneaking my jacket out of the house to the laundry so Mikhail wouldn't know that I've been to the McDonalds'

or another greasy place. His attempts at learning our “dialect” were truly funny and his impersonation of the
Argentinean accent was very accurate. I caressed the side of his face and muttered “good-bye, my friend.” I closed
my eyes because I've never felt so tired, defeated in my life.

“You're disgusting! Sleeping next to a body!” Stephanov shouted me awake, giving me another kick on
the back. I rolled and tried to stand from my knelt position but he hit me again in the face with a lot of force. I nearly
fainted.

“No! Not in the face my love. I want a beautiful body so Constantin knows what he has lost. Morozov
wants him devastated with grief, unable to think. Lintorff will finish him off.” I heard the voice of the bitch. “He's an
artist, focus on that, my love.”

“As you wish Olga, now let us work. This is for men only, dear.” He chuckled and I thought poor idiot,
she will turn you into meatballs once she's finished with me. That woman is a predator of the worst kind. Sharks kill
because they're conditioned by nature to do so; she kills for pleasure and power.

I heard her heels stomping over the concrete floor, going away and I braced myself for what was coming
with the three monsters. As I have predicted they moved the body to one dark corner, doing their best not to touch it.

Funny, you kill but you're afraid of a body.

They were very classical with me as they couldn't touch my face. They kicked me on the stomach and
ribs many, many times. At some point I stopped counting the blows and huddled, trying to protect my head, but I didn't
plead and that drove the two men mad. I was in maddening pain, my body burning in flames and every breath was a
slow torture, but I didn't feel like crying.

“So you're a though guy?” Stephanov shook me because I think I was fainting and I vomited or spat a
lot of blood, ruining his precious shoes. He hit me on the stomach with all his force and I bent over myself with the
pain, howling. One of the others ripped my jacket and shirt off and started to burn my skin with a cigarette. It was a
horrible pain as you could feel the red point going through the layers of skin and the foul sweet stench of the burned
meat. It's nothing like you have never experienced in your life. It's just unique. But I didn't plead, just like Chano told
me to do.

They shouted something in Russian at each other and the two men looked very nervous about something.

“We will try what the boss finds so good.”

I felt them tearing my clothes, but I was half conscious due to the beating and couldn't resist them as all
my remaining strength was on my brain, trying to find a way to nullify the pain. One of them—don't know which one
because I couldn't see well on my right side clouded somehow—threw me against a table making me face the wooden
surface and the door that led to the wine cellar. I felt one hand securing me by the neck, burying his fingers and
suffocating me. He penetrated me and I yelled when he did it feeling his satisfaction pour all over me. He fucked me
very hard, and it was like being torn in two. He almost left me deaf with his groan when he finished inside me. He
shouted something in Russian and all of them laughed. The second and the third came next.

But I didn't plead or make them stop. Stephanov took me twice, the second not even finishing it. As they
were too exhausted to continue with the game and I assume I was bleeding in a very disgusting way, they decided to
focus on the “he's an artist” part.

First they removed the nails, one by one from my left hand and later used a hammer to break the fingers.

My throat was raw from my crying because there are no words to describe how you feel when your torturer toys with
you, falsely attacking you, just to make you cry and finally gives you the blow or the pull. It's a game, a political game
about showing you that he's in charge and you're nothing.

Wrong, you're something; you have what he desires, like Chano told me.

I only wanted to die to escape the pain, but they knew exactly when to stop to let me recover just a bit. I
knew there that I was going to die but they will take all the time in the world to do it and I just wanted to avoid the
pain.

“Water,” I pleaded finally, knowing that they wouldn't give it to me, but having an idea of what could
pass through their minds.

“Do you want a drink? Suck me and you'll get some. Bite me and you're dead.” The dark haired shouted
grabbing me by the hair. That was my hope. He put his filthy thing inside my mouth and started to ram it, keeping my
head straight by fisting my hair.

I bit him hard, not to the point of tearing the member, but to the point of feeling the blood flood into my
mouth. He yelled and fell to the floor from the pain. His friend jumped on me and stabbed me three times in the
stomach, before Stephanov could stop him.