“That’s right.” He gives one, slow nod.
I’m remembering a December six years past when my father took an unexpected trip. He came home five days before Christmas.
It doesn’t prove anything. My father travels all kinds of places all the time.
Still, the image of Kyrylo Lomenchenko burns in my brain: his body hanging over the dock, cut from neck to groin . . .
I’ve seen my father gut a deer in exactly that manner.
My stomach heaves.
Anyone could have killed Estas’ brother. Maybe my father did do it, but he had a good reason.
But then . . . why lie to me?
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
I mean, I’m sorry that happened. I’m sorry you lost your brother.
Estas just looks at me, through the mask of swollen flesh blanketing his face.
“You really don’t know anything he does, do you?” he says.
I want to deny it.
I want to shout at Estas that I know my own father.
Instead, I turn and run out of the Keep.
26
Ivan Petrov
Marko visits me early in January.
We’re both in a dark mood.
Me, because it’s the fourth Christmas I’ve missed with my family.
Marko’s swirling anger is a mystery to me. He comes into my cell with none of his usual mockery. His face is stone, his eyes blank and dark as a shark’s.
He doesn’t greet me—he only jerks his head to the folding chair, a silent order to sit down so Kuzmo can cuff my arms behind me.
Once I’m seated, bound in place, he doesn’t bring out the phone. Instead, he orders Kuzmo to leave and close the door behind him.
“Are you sure?” Kuzmo asks, with a significant look in my direction.
Marko reacts in an instant, seizing Kuzmo by the throat and slamming him against the wall with all the might of his massive frame. He snarls into his lieutenant’s face, “Do you think I can’t handle one fucking man tied to a chair? A man who’s been locked in here for four fucking years as my prisoner?”
“N-no sir,” Kuzmo stammers. “I mean yes, of course you can handle him. I only meant—”
“Get out,” Marko hisses at him.
Kuzmo stumbles out of the room, swinging the heavy door shut behind him.
Now Marko and I are truly alone, for the first time in years.
His shoulders are still heaving with rapid, angry breaths. He stares at the wall, trying to recover his calm. Then, at last, he sinks down heavily onto my cot, the metal springs creaking beneath his weight.
“You have a son and a daughter,” he says, his rasping voice cutting through the silence.
“Yes,” I say.
“Are they obedient children?”
“Sometimes.”
“And what of your wife?” he persists. “Is she loyal to you?”
“Always,” I say.
Marko doesn’t like that answer. He shifts irritably on the cot, his cloudy green eyes fixed on me. His sclera are bloodshot. Vodka seeps out of his lungs with every exhale, acrid in the tight space of the cell.
“I confess,” he says. “I thought Sloane would try harder to find you.”
Anger churns in my stomach. The cuffs bite into my wrists as my arms flex against the steel.
I tell myself not to rise to the bait. Marko is trying to anger me. He may even be searching for Sloane, trying to goad me into revealing where she might be, and what she might be doing.
Calmly, I say, “All I ask of my wife is that she pay the ransom and keep my business running in my absence.”
Marko gives a dismissive snort. His gaze slides away again, pulled back to his own tormenting thoughts. His gnarled hands clench and unclench on his lap.
“We do everything for them,” he says. “We capture the world and lay it at their feet. And all we demand in return is fealty.”
I think, without saying it, that fealty cannot be demanded. It can only be exchanged between two people, freely and willingly.
Marko has never understood that.
He wants what he himself cannot give.
Because deep down, his only loyalty is to himself.
Perhaps to his daughter as well . . . I’ve never seen them together, so I can’t say. Even if I had, I doubt anyone can guess the deepest priorities of a man’s heart.
All I know is that I would offer my body and soul to save my wife, my daughter, or my son.
They are more precious to me than myself.
While my deepest wish is to see them again and hold them in my arms, I would never risk a hair on their heads to make that happen.
I haven’t answered Marko, and that irritates him further.
He holds the cellphone in his hand, gripping it so hard that I’m surprised his swollen fingers don’t shatter the screen.
“Do you tire of this, Ivan?” he says, jerking his head to indicate the entirety of the cell. “Do you want this to be over?”
He isn’t asking me if I want to go home.
We’re not playing that game anymore.
“Sometimes,” I reply cautiously.
“Are you lonely here? Do your thoughts eat at you? Does your guilt eat at you?”
His teeth are bared, the incisors the color of old ivory. The lid of his right eye twitches.
It strikes me that Marko is lonely. His men worship him with slavish devotion—Kuzmo especially. But they are not his friends. And certainly not his equals.
Marko put a pen through the eye of his last ally. As for me, his oldest friend . . . I’ve become his most hated enemy.
A king has few friends. A dictator has none.
“We all have our demons,” I say. “I know mine too well to lose any sleep over them.”
“Indeed,” Marko says, angry and unsatisfied by my answers. “Well, don’t worry, Ivan. This will all be over soon. Only a few more payments to make.”
I don’t like the sound of that. Marko said it would be five years. I never believed that . . . and I certainly don’t like the escalation of the timeline.
Marko holds the phone up to my ear, already dialing.
When Dominik answers, our conversation is brief.
“We had a problem with the last transfer out of Gazprombank,” he says.
“What a kind of problem?” I ask.
“Foma Kushnir said there were irregularities with our account. He wanted to order an audit.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I told him to check with the bank director, to buy us time. Then I had Zima hack in to work his magic. We erased all recurring entries. Cash-flow on Monday is now good. Moroz will get his payment right on time.”
“I better,” Marko growls, listening carefully.
“Good,” I say to Dom. “Thank you for handling that.”
Marko ends the call, slipping the phone back into his pocket.
My heart is racing, though I try not to let him perceive so much as a flicker of an eyelash.
Maybe there was a problem at the bank and maybe there wasn’t.
Either way, Dominik’s actual message is clear:
We
Erased
All
Recurring
Entries
Cash-flow
On
Monday
Is